The 'Suckered!' Trilogy

[David Orsam]

If Tumblety was a Ripper suspect and Andrews is going to be in one of his recent haunts why would he not do some discreet digging?

Two questions arise:

1. Did Anderson know that Andrews was going to one of Tumblety's "recent haunts"?

2. What would have been the purpose of "some discreet digging" when such digging in Toronto could never possibly turn up evidence to charge Tumblety with the Whitechapel murders in circumstances where Tumblety had fled from the UK and could not be charged with the murders (for which Scotland Yard never had any evidence anyway otherwise they would have charged him)?

[David Orsam]

To David

I have done what you demanded several times already, whereas you have not answered my challenge.

49?! Then you have no excuse for being so doctrinaire. Which I'm not being. Nor am I being fervent. That sounds more like you.

Because you might be wrong, because you were not there.

And you don't have to 'recollect' anything. Just read what I wrote--twice--to realize you are spinning away from real people and the real world into intellectual sterility and, worse, a tart rigidity.

I notice that when you don't understand a point I have made, say about Kelly, you assume it is irrelevant. Whereas Mayerling grasped its meaning, about hindsight, immediately.

As I wrote before we will have to agree to disagree, if you can cope with that non-doctrinaire concept.

Jonathan,

I say, with great, surprise that your response strikes me as evasive. Evasiveness is not something I would have associated with you.

The simple fact is that you have not responded to my challenge to list the evidence to support your theory in numbered form and it is astonishing that you claim to have done so.

You refer to a challenge to me but I have no idea what you are talking about.

I am asking you for the evidence to support the theory that Andrews went to Toronto to carry out research into Tumblety. I am saying as clear as day that I do not believe there is any. If you strongly believe in a theory without any evidence then it becomes more of a religious type belief does it not?

And you confuse my certainty with inflexibility or rigidity. I am always willing to challenge my own assumptions on the basis of evidence. But in this case I am not seeing any which would cause me to do so.

p.s. I am 48 (work it out!)

[Jonathan H]

No, I did not think that you would accept just agreeing to disagree.

Maybe you should read "The Buffs" again.

Instead there is just the detritus of this non-debate to sweep into the gutter.

So, because I have not listed my evidence/argument with numbers you are unable to find it or follow it in previous posts. You must be pulling my leg.

After all, that would be evasive--surely not.

I asked if you could be wrong. That's a yes or no proposition. You write--frequently--that you don't know what I, or others, are talking about.

You certainly haven't answered that simple question.

Instead I get marching orders from you to do this and to do that, and to stand on my head.

No thanks.

You never responded to my delineating my natural bias--e.g. against Andrews hunting Tumblety--because I presume it did not compute.

What Mayerling is arguing is exactly what I am arguing too, rightly or wrongly. Which you have missed as well.

I tried to explain that historical methodology is never as simple as a sterile recitation of the facts because apart from the who, what and where, sources, being made by fallible humans, begin to split apart and disagree, often diametrically. This becomes even more challenging when the sources are scrappy and incomplete.

A person has to make judgments as to the why, and then defend them as best they can. Until, that is, new sources are found, if ever. But such ambiguity allows for multiple and competing interpretations (that by no means have to be in equipoise; their strength can vary in the eye of the beholder but not be absolutely discounted). Sadly, you don't allow for that because you confuse this process with a courtroom. You do not realize that conjecture is a tool, utilized to build a provisional solution to try and make sense of a paradox.

For example, I think Tom W is probably wrong about some of the machinations he theorizes behind the Parnell imbroglio, but he might be right too. That certain concessions maybe were made due to legal pressure, and not because people meant what they said.

I think your pieces are excellent. What I did not realize is that you think you have proved your argument absolutely. That's doctrinaire, or what you call religious thinking and such like.

By the way, you quickly turned as petty as some of the people who zeroed in on a spelling error you made. And you are wrong again, as I didn't mean it that way -- which encapsulates your problem of only looking at things one way because you believe there can be no other viable angle.

You are in your 49th year, work it out.

[mklhawley]

I would have expected the ripper headline to be the one to use but they didn't did they? With a follow up for him jumping bail to avoid the hangman to make it more sensational.

So which headline did they use then in the end?

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

I'm on vacation, so I just saw this (and typing on an old iPhone 4). I answered these questions in two Rip articles, my Yellow Journalism article and my Tumblety over the Wire article. Prior to 1888, the AP was created by the big 5 NY papers to just print the facts and the headline in question would not have sacrificed accuracy for sales. Once I'm back, maybe I'll start a thread on this point.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Trevor Marriott]

I'm on vacation, so I just saw this (and typing on an old iPhone 4). I answered these questions in two Rip articles, my Yellow Journalism article and my Tumblety over the Wire article. Prior to 1888, the AP was created by the big 5 NY papers to just print the facts and the headline in question would not have sacrificed accuracy for sales. Once I'm back, maybe I'll start a thread on this point.

Sincerely,

Mike

No need to Mike the answer is quite simple it wasn't The Ripper one !

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

For me, I'm afraid, what you are saying doesn't make any sense. Who, for example, were "Le Caron's operatives" who you suggest were likely to have approached Andrews in Toronto? And why would they have approached him? When you say "even if he knew the official reason for Andrews going to Canada", who are you referring to? Anderson? You seem to be, for then you say "he'd have been seriously remiss about totally ignoring the possibility of hearing news in Toronto." But of course Anderson would have been the person giving the orders. And what news in Toronto would Anderson have been expecting Andrews to hear?

And to answer your actual question, no it doesn't make any sense for Anderson to have told Andrews to ignore anything he was told about Tumblety in Toronto (if that is what you are saying) because he wouldn't have been expecting him to be told anything.



I fully understand the issue of hindsight Jeff but I fear it is you who are using hindsight here. It is only with the benefit of hindsight and modern research that we know that Tumblety had some (slim) connection with Toronto. I'm suggesting that Anderson in November 1888 would not have had any idea about this because that information was confined to newspapers in North America which Anderson would not have read or been aware of.

The suggestion that Scotland Yard might have obtained information about Tumblety after he fled the country is hypothetical only with no evidence at all to support it. Moreover, if Anderson had evidence that Tumblety was JTR, sufficient that Tumblety could be charged, then his only option was to commence official extradition proceedings. You say "Anderson knows he must make an effort to track him down and bring him back". Sending an officer to the United States, who had no jurisdiction in the United States, if that is what you are suggesting, would not have got him anywhere. And without extradition proceedings there was no point in doing background research into Tumblety because he couldn't be charged with anything. We know that there were no extradition proceedings so QED Anderson never got any evidence against Tumblety sufficient to charge him with anything.

For the reasons I mentioned above, your suggestion that Anderson would have told Andrews to "keep his ears open" about Tumblety makes no historical sense to me but, even if for some strange reason he did, this is very different to what R.J. Palmer and Jonathan are saying.

Hi David,

See you bagged my head for the collection - sorry to say it that way.
I usually have avoided any comments on your threads of a somewhat critical nature, but that's because I hate confrontations. And as I write that set of sentences and phrases I keep imagining that at some future date they, and whatever else follows will be semantic examined and tossed aside to make the original writer (here me) look 1) small, 2) dumb, 3) impossible to make aware of the glories that have opened up.

Please understand, I have been absolutely floored by the truly magnificent (and I am not saying this to be flattering) piece of investigation that you did. I know I probably could never have done the half of it, due to physical problems of my person and of my location in New York City. I really congratulate you on what you have accomplished. It is fine as far as it goes - which is the opening level of serious study of those Scotland Yard detectives in Canada and North America (in case they were in the U.S. at any point). It is not the end all and be all of this area of investigation, but the first step. You did a great job opening that first step.

I have an idea for a second step - possibly one you already thought of or even looked into - but I will get back to that.

Operatives: As I am now trying to build up my knowledge of the business with Thomas Miller Beach (a.k.a. "Major Henry Le Caron) and his work on Irish-American political activity in the 1880s) I used the term "operatives". You caught me. Congratulations on finding me saying something you can point out to me. I am taking it for granted that the Major had contacts that he passed his information to. Maybe he didn't. Maybe you are right again. If he didn't have such operatives, I am sorry I used the term. If he did but did not use the term "operatives" then again we enter the world of semantics. Put another way: before Beach appeared before the Parnell Commission (thus ending his usefulness as "Major Le Caron") how did he get his reports and information to London - by mail, by telegram, by carrier pigeon? Now I am curious about this point.


Was I referring to Sir Robert Anderson in a sentence where I used the word "he" in reference to knowing what was the official reason for Andrews going to Canada? Yes, you are right. I meant Sir Robert Anderson in that sentence when I used the pronoun "he". I know in the next sentence I used that same pronoun to refer to Andrews, but the structure of the comment should have tipped off the reader that I did. I am glad the structure of the first sentence tipped you off to a successful grasping that in that sentence I used "he" for Sir Robert.

What news would Anderson been expecting in Toronto for Andrews to hear?
Well, forgetting for a moment the business about a possible word from "Le Caron", almost anything. Canada, although it had been a Confederation since 1867, already had a major assassination (Thomas D'Arcy McGee in Toronto in 1868 - probably by a Fenian named Patrick Whelan who was hanged for it), a major railroad scandal that threw the Tories out of office in 1873, two serious revolts by the Metis in the province of Manitoba (led by Louis Riel, founder of the province, who was hanged for treason and murder in 1885 after the second one), and even joint Sioux Indian problems with the U.S. in the late 1870s into 1881 when Sitting Bull returned to the U.S. with his followers. For all that it was a major part of the British Empire of 1888, so any person of authority visiting a major city (in this case Toronto, the financial hub of Canada then and now) would have been in a position to hear things of importance having nothing to do with immediate from Scotland Yard. Or things of triviality too (how much booze has Sir John MacDonald been imbibing before he speaks before Parliament?). When you ask the question you are asking a nonsensical question. Anderson would be willing to hear anything about what Andrews might hear on the journey that seemed of interest. Canada had a history of Fenian problems. Besides the tragedy of McGee's assassination (he had been speaking out against Fenian activities in Canada - and keep in mind McGee had been involved in the 1848 "Young Ireland" movement and brief civil war, resulting in his being exiled to Canada), there was also several attempts by Irish-American Civil War veterans who in 1866 and 1867 "invaded" Canada to take it over as a bargaining chip with England to free Ireland. Anderson would have been (with his history of anti-Fenian spy activity) interested in that brought up to date too. Finally, as for Tumblety, well - let's see - the Doctor was born in Canada, and he practiced in Canada and the United States, but was now an American citizen, and the Doctor had fled England (although to France), so the Doctor was most likely going to return to the United States. Hmm, would that be reason enough to make sure if Andrews heard anything he could relate it to Anderson - maybe. Of course it helps that Canada is the large next door neighbor to the U.S. It wasn't impossible to pick up some kind of rumor or information while in Toronto. Not like if Andrews had been sent to Calcutta, Cape Town, or Wellington, or Sydney. In those locations if there had been any rumors of Tumblety in the U.S. Anderson (and Andrews) would have paid little attention to it.

Hindsight issue: Why are you certain that Sir Robert Anderson would never have read any North American newspapers, or been aware of their content?

Granted he probably did not have sufficient time to read these papers thoroughly, but being an old hand at information gathering I would suspect he'd have someone on his staff looking at certain foreign newspapers for items of interest. Of course my idea of a secretary or assistant to Anderson doing this is predicated on such a character existing - much as my use of the term "operative" for Le Caron. So I guess (unless someone who studies this can clarify it) we can leave this matter in the air. Besides, I seem to be trying to make you prove a negative (Anderson never read North American newspapers, period!!!)

Possible Tumblety Extradition Question: Yes it would have been troublesome, but it would have been pursued if 1) Anderson learned new information that linked Tumblety to the Whitechapel murders, and 2) Tumblety, now a potentially lethal figure residing in New York, might start up again.

I remind you that two years after these events, when the unfortunate "Old Shakespeare" was killed in New York City, Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrnes did quickly catch a suspect who did get convicted (though years later he was released). Byrnes (who was Irish-American) has a mixed reputation in police history. He was a sharp and innovative Detective, and on the whole an effective one. Unfortunately he took bribes (in the form of stock market tips - he protected the Wall Street area very well), and used certain forceful methods like the "Third Degree" to get confessions and stuff. He was crowing when he caught (or thought he caught) Old Shakespeare's killer, comparing it to the failure by Scotland Yard to apparently catch the Ripper. If anything had cropped up that would have made Tumblety a party of considerable interest regarding Whitechapel to Scotland Yard, Anderson would have moved heaven and earth to extradite him.

Oh, by the way, I am aware that British detectives had no legal right to remove suspects living in the U.S. (unless there was a legal extradition). However, before we leave this interesting minor point - in 1895 Inspector Fred Froest kidnapped (no better way of putting it) the absconding businessman and member of Parliament from Croyden, Jabez Balfour, from Argentina (even causing a death in the process). There was no extradition treaty between Argentina and Britain at the time. Froest never stood trial in Argentina for murder and kidnapping. Balfour got fourteen years for business fraud. No doubt the U.S. was a harder nut to crack than Argentina, but this does show that under certain circumstances the British police would have crossed the line to get their fugitive.

Now as to my follow up idea:

Henry Labouchere was a Liberal Member of Parliament with a big mouth. He makes repeated comments about the actions of Scotland Yard detectives in North America in 1889, and whether they are, in fact, there to help the "Times" of London and the Tories in finding evidence against Charles Stewart Parnell, head of the "Home Rule" Movement in Ireland. As a result, there will be a legal action brought against Labouchere, and he will end up making a public apology that he was wrong in his statements, and pay costs and damages to the Scotland Yard Detecive who sues him.

That much we are reawakened about.

My question - what was the source of what Labouchere heard?

My possible suggestion - is it feasible to check the personal papers and (if they exist) diaries of leading Home Rule advocates in Parliament (like T.M. Healy, or even Parnell) or out of it, to see if these rumors pop up elsewhere so we can figure out where Labouchere heard them?

That would seem to be the next step on this research.

Jeff

[David Orsam]

No, I did not think that you would accept just agreeing to disagree.

As I said earlier, I want to try to convince you to agree to agree. That is surely the purpose of this entire forum. If I fail I fail, but I feel I should attempt it.

So, because I have not listed my evidence/argument with numbers you are unable to find it or follow it in previous posts. You must be pulling my leg.

This is very revealing. I asked you to list your evidence and you have changed it to "evidence/argument". Argument is precisely what I don't want and it is why I specifically asked for short numbered bullet points. I know that you have loads of argument. I am trying to establish what your evidence is. I'm saying there is none but feel free to demonstrate that I am wrong by listing it.

I asked if you could be wrong. That's a yes or no proposition. You write--frequently--that you don't know what I, or others, are talking about.

This obsession with whether I think I am right or wrong or whether I believe I could or could not be wrong is unhelpful and irrelevant. What does it matter what I think about my own work? What will it tell you other than something about me? I'm trying to engage in a discussion about a historical event. In any case, I have already told you that I think I am right but am willing to reconsider all my views on the basis of facts and evidence.

You never responded to my delineating my natural bias--e.g. against Andrews hunting Tumblety--because I presume it did not compute.

For the same reason as a discussion about me is not important, a discussion about your views, and why you hold them, is also not very important. I asked you the question originally simply because I wanted to focus your mind on the absence of evidence but if you say you don't religiously believe in the Palmer argument then fine, I accept that. But I would still like to know the evidence which supports Palmer. I couldn't find it in his trilogy.

What Mayerling is arguing is exactly what I am arguing too, rightly or wrongly. Which you have missed as well.

I would prefer to hear it from you in your own words because Mayerling (as I see he has accepted) got a bit confused about things like the existence of Le Caron's operatives.

I tried to explain that historical methodology is never as simple as a sterile recitation of the facts because apart from the who, what and where, sources, being made by fallible humans, begin to split apart and disagree, often diametrically. This becomes even more challenging when the sources are scrappy and incomplete.

This all started because you referred to "conflicting data". I then asked you "what data?" I think you misunderstood me because your reply was that by data you meant "material/information/sources" but I already understood this and I was essentially asking you what material/information/sources or to put it another way, what evidence? As you know, I don't see any conflicting evidence here. It is all one way.

Sadly, you don't allow for that because you confuse this process with a courtroom. You do not realize that conjecture is a tool, utilized to build a provisional solution to try and make sense of a paradox.

If, by this, you are saying that there is, in fact, no evidence to support your theory, only conjecture, then fine but why are you so afraid to say so?

For example, I think Tom W is probably wrong about some of the machinations he theorizes behind the Parnell imbroglio, but he might be right too. That certain concessions maybe were made due to legal pressure, and not because people meant what they said.

But that's my argument! Labouchere certainly conceded due to legal pressure because he was about to be cross-examined about allegations that he knew were not true in a forthcoming trial. That was the legal pressure he was under. As I understand him, Tom W is referring to pressure other than legal which I have said is ridiculous.

I think your pieces are excellent. What I did not realize is that you think you have proved your argument absolutely. That's doctrinaire, or what you call religious thinking and such like.

I have not said that I have "proved my argument absolutely". You are repeating the same point that Tom W made to me and I clearly told him that I believe I have made a compelling case on the basis of the evidence. I think you are getting confused by the fact that, in response to your claim that my argument about Walter Dew was not only improbable but "a travesty" I said it was entirely probable "and in my view 100% certainly the case" that, if Dew's only knowledge of Andrews being involved in the JTR investigation was of him going to America, he simply must have picked this up from the newspapers. You have obsessed about this statement ever since. That happens to be my view. If I am 100% certain or 99% or 98% certain what difference does it make? I am indeed certain I am right - because that certainty is based on the evidence - but am prepared to listen to any evidence based arguments which suggest I am wrong.

By the way, you quickly turned as petty as some of the people who zeroed in on a spelling error you made. And you are wrong again, as I didn't mean it that way -- which encapsulates your problem of only looking at things one way because you believe there can be no other viable angle.

You are in your 49th year, work it out.

Now Jonathan, I appreciate that the tone of our discussion has disintegrated over the last few posts, which is regrettable, but I hope you will take it from me that you have misunderstood my postscript. Misunderstandings are very easy on the internet but when I put an exclamation mark I usually use this as some others would use "lol" or a smiley face. So when I said "work it out!" that was a light-hearted comment which, I'm disappointed to see, you have taken the wrong way. It was intended as no criticism of you and I make no criticism for the fact you have misunderstood it because I appreciate the context in which it was written that made confusion more likely. You did, of course, say that I was 49 and, naturally, I wanted to correct that statement and was leaving it to you to work out why I was 48 and not 49.

[David Orsam]

Hi Jeff,

There is no need for you to justify disagreeing with me or making comments of a critical nature. I have no problem with that at all. Some people do seem to get upset but I'm always up for a proper discussion which will inevitably involve disagreement.

I wasn't trying to "catch you out" in my posts. I was trying to understand what you were saying to me.

As far as I know, Le Caron's letters went to Anderson by mail. Whether there was a secure method of transmission being used I can't tell you. But I don't see this as being relevant to anything to do with Andrews' mission to Toronto.

The reason why I asked you whether Robert Anderson was the "he" in your sentence "if he knew the official reason for Andrews going to Canada had to do with non-Whitechapel and non-Parnell matters" was because I was baffled that you would even suggest that Anderson would not know the "official reason" for Andrews going to Canada considering that he was the man who gave the orders and would have been in charge of the entire operation. So how could he not know the official reason? I think I detected sarcasm in your response to me on this point but, if so, I feel it is misplaced.

You tell me that "Anderson would be willing to hear anything about what Andrews might hear on the journey that seemed of interest." Well of course, that is a truism. Equally, Andrews would have known that his boss would want to hear anything he heard on the journey that seemed of interest. So he would not need to have been told.

But here's the problem. You say: "Finally, as for Tumblety, well - let's see - the Doctor was born in Canada, and he practiced in Canada". This is my point about hindsight. You know this, or think you know this, now in 2015 . But did Anderson know it or believe it in 1888? There is no evidence. And it strikes me as unlikely in the extreme.

According to R.J. Palmer, on 18th November "reports coming out of New York were claiming, erroneously that Tumblety was a Canadian". He then points out that on the following day, 19th November, Anderson "began negotiations to send a man to Canada". It is, in my opinion, a terrible argument because he establishes no causal link between the two events which were clearly a coincidence. The reports coming out of New York on 18th November did not reach any London newspapers.

I have examined a lot of original files and I am satisfied that there was no regular monitoring of the foreign press at Scotland Yard nor was any person employed to do this. Why would they? Sometimes U.S. newspaper reports on Irish activity would be sent to London from diplomatic officials based in New York - and these are in the files - but there are no cuttings about Tumblety in those files. I don't know how exactly how long it would even have taken a foreign newspaper to actually reach London (or whether these could even be purchased in London at any time in 1888) but I would have thought about 10 days. If the newspapers did even reach London, which I don't think they did, it would have needed someone at Scotland Yard to have paid for them and I am not aware of anything in Police Orders or in Scotland Yard memos or documents about expenditure on foreign newspapers. And you seem to be saying that someone would have read ALL the foreign newspapers just in case something of interest was printed. It didn't happen Jeff.

I regard it as practically impossible for Anderson to have been aware of newspaper reports about Tumblety in foreign newspapers before Andrews left for Canada on 29 November 1888 and challenge anyone who disagrees to provide some form evidence to the contrary (even in just general terms of monitoring the foreign press).

You can hypothesise about new evidence coming forward after Tumblety fled as much as you like but it doesn't matter because the real weakness of your argument is that Tumblety's flight made background research into his life totally academic. There would only have been any point in doing it for a prosecution where witnesses might have needed to be located to give evidence against him, as happened in the case of Cream. Any questions that Anderson wanted to know about Tumblety's life in Toronto could have been put into a letter and sent to the Toronto police at any time.

You say: "If anything had cropped up that would have made Tumblety a party of considerable interest regarding Whitechapel to Scotland Yard, Anderson would have moved heaven and earth to extradite him." So it follows from the absence of any attempt by Anderson to extradite Tumblety that he did not learn anything which made him of considerable interest regarding Whitechapel to Scotland Yard, right?

I don't really want to get into a discussion about Jabez Balfour but I just want to point out that the Attorney General told the House of Commons on 9 May 1895 that "Warrants of information were sent in the ordinary course to Argentina and after the decision of the courts of law of that country the person named was arrested under the sanction of the Courts of Argentina". Perhaps a new thread would be more appropriate if you want to put forward a different version of events?

As for your idea of a second step, you can carry out any research you want to but, personally, I don't see any relevance or significance in the identity of Labouchere's source (which you will almost certainly never identify in any case). Labouchere admitted that his source was mistaken so if it was Joe Bloggs or Patrick Egan it's not important, at least to me.

[Mayerling]

Hi Dave,

First I did get a trifle too sarcastic in the earlier response, especially regarding "he" in sentences. My deepest regrets about that.

I admit a bit of looking at 1888-89-90-91 matters with a 2015 headset. It actually cannot be helped, and oddly we all suffer from it because we live in 2015. Still one can stand back a bit and think of this.

A number of years back I wrote an essay (I believe it was in The Ripperologists or Ripper Notes) regarding Sir Robert Anderson and his involvement with French informants. He had the use of a former high police official who had worked in the government of Napoleon III but was (after 1870) no longer able to work in the Third Republic. The man was living in London with his family and of use only as an informant (regarding French crime and Fenian activities, etc.). Now this matter was in Anderson's memoirs - especially as it pertained to two odd incidents, neither of which actually were current ones of the 1870 - 1890 periods. One was that the informant told Anderson that the notable early supporter of Napoleon III, the Count d'Orsay, did not die of natural causes as was thought but from the results of a bullet in his back that he accidentally received from an assassin aiming at the French emperor when Napoleon III was with d'Orsay in a palace garden. The other dealt with the truth about the case of the unknown victim of the 1857 "Waterloo Bridge" mystery. That victim was an agent of one of the anti-Mazzini Italian governments, who had infiltrated a group in London.

I can tell you this, I did double check with an expert on Napoleon III's France, Professor Roger Williams, and he dismissed the d'Orsay story as highly unlikely. As for the Waterloo Bridge Mystery, I went into it as closely as I could, and really couldn't ascertain if Anderson's informant was telling the truth or not. However, I did suggest (one of several possibilities as it turned out) if the information regarding the Waterloo Bridge Mystery and an Italian revolutionary group had some truth to it, it might have had a link (now hard to find) to the activities in London of Orsini and his group (like Dr. Simon Barnard) prior to the attack on Napoleon III at the Paris Opera House in 1858. Or, it may be total hogwash again. It really depends on the truth of the informant, and the equal truth of the man telling the story to us - Sir Robert Anderson.

I am going into this to show that Anderson did keep an ear open to foreign developments with foreign agents. Even so, I admit that an agent (even now in dubious circumstances like a fallen former police official) from France (only one small sea channel away from Britain, is not the same as dealing with a country like the U.S which is an ocean away and far larger.

That ten days newspaper difference (actually it sounds very plausible to me to regarding the difference in information gathering in 1888) does poke a sizeable hole into my thoughts. Still, I can't imagine that Sir Robert wouldn't have built up some kind of information center from abroad regarding what was cooking in the U.S., especially regarding Irish-American activities against Britain. Maybe my concept is too soon here - maybe by 1895 (a bit late) something cold have been set up. With the Atlantic cable connection, and international press connections I can't see why it wouldn't eventually been done. Perhaps it would have been too late in this matter but not necessarily in others.

Actually I agree to disagree regarding my hypothetical of further information about Tumblety's possible guilty connection in Whitechapel and the need for further background information. Certainly it would be needed for a clearer picture of the suspect, but also for tracking him down. Oddly enough four years later the reverse situation happened twice - in the matters regarding Frederick Deeming's criminal history and in the matter of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream's criminal history, when the former's career in Australia, in Africa, in South America, and in England (leading back to the first set of murders in Rainhill near Liverpool) resulted, and in the latter's criminal history in Canada and the United States (including several trials for abortion related deaths, poisonings, and the trial of Cream for the murder of Daniel Stott - resulting in his imprisonment in Joliet). For the sake of completeness or even possible future criminal prosecution (as was prepared for Deeming had his trial for the murder of his second wife in Melbourne resulted in acquittal) was necessary.

As you point out, since Anderson did not move "heaven and earth" to extradite Tumblety nothing of importance must have been revealed. Yes, that is true. However, more subtly, it turned out to be true. When Andrews went to Canada Anderson would not have known if it was going to turn out to be true.

If anyone wishes to put up a thread on Balfour and his "Liberator" Frauds and Froest's pursuit of him, I've no objections. I just brought up the matter regarding how Froest captured him - and it is usually that story that I used for illustration purposes that is told in various volumes on police activities on criminals in hiding. If there is actually some proof that using the diplomatic channels and "sanctions of the courts of Argentina" was the true method (aside from the statement in Parliament) I would not mind seeing it shown on another thread.

To me the relevance of tracing the source of "Joe Blogs", Patrick Egan, or whomever gave Labouchere's hearsay it's initial start is the following - if it was traced to some drunk named "Joe Blogs" who opened his yap and made the comment that was relayed by someone to Labouchere it would show that the MP and owner of "Truth" really needed better sources of information. If however it was someone like Patrick Egan who relayed it to say Healey, and he mentioned it in the presence of Labouchere it's a horse of a different color. Because if later on Labouchere went back to the respectable middleman to ask him to appear in court and give the source's name, the middleman might have blanched and said "Can't do it Henry. It puts me and several others into a bad light about our contacts." Egan (who I believe was dead in 1889 or soon would be) was linked to the circumstances in Ireland leading to Phoenix Park, and there was a warrant for him. I doubt if the U.S. would have extradited Egan, for he was to serve the U.S. as our Minister to Chile (an action the Chilean Government was not too thrilled about).

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

This is my last post on this matter as it is a dead end, and has been several posts back.

The sterility of the line of reasoning is chilly to the point of arctic. The dismissal of sources, and interpretations of ambiguous primary sources, as worthless, irrelevant and incomprehensible -- and if not understood ipso facto worthless--is reductionist and ahistorical.

Just for the record I think that R. J. Palmer's trilogy "Inspector Andrews Revisited" is one of the great long essays written on this subject, or at least about a knotty aspect of this subject.

It is beautifully written and judiciously argued. It exhibits the highest standards of historical scholarship whilst conceding it is a provisional interpretation of limited and contradictory material. Anybody has the prerogative to read it and to not be persuaded.

Multiple newspaper accounts in different countries, at the time, claimed that Andrews was really digging dirt against an Irish thorn in the side of the establishment or that he was pursuing a prime Ripper suspect to North America.

It is possible that all these newspaper accounts are equally spurious, opportunistic and hollow.

What Palmer established, for me, was the nuts and bolts of the political context that made it very unlikely that Parnell was the real object of Andrews' trip nor that the English detective was in any melodramatic sense 'chasing' Dr. Tumblety to New York City. Yet Andrews was one of the three, key Whitechapel field detectives according to Dew. So why send Andrews to Canada on an errand in the middle of the Terror when that might trigger another backlash, either from the state or the press - or both? Anderson had the negative example of his own sojourn abroad (and the delicious meal made of it by the unsympathetic London press).

Something much less dramatic was happening, Palmer argues, e.g. a background check to do something -- and do something discreet and on the cheap -- because CID, the Home Office and the government were all under tremendous pressure because of the Ripper scare. At this distance that pressure is not so easy to quantify from mere [official] documentation. Both Anderson and Macnaghten, who never mention Dr. Tumblety, are in rare unanimity in their respective memoirs about this strain on law enforcement:

Sir Robert Anderson, "The Lighter Side of My Official Life", 1910

"The second of the crimes known as the Whitechapel murders was committed the night before I took office, and the third occurred the night of the day on which I left London. The newspapers soon began to comment on my absence. And letters from Whitehall decided me to spend the last week of my holiday in Paris, that I might be in touch with my office. On the night of my arrival in the French capital two more victims fell to the knife of the murder-fiend ; and next day's post brought me an urgent appeal from Mr. Matthews to return to London ; and of course I complied.

On my return I found the Jack-the-Ripper scare in full swing. When the stolid English go in for a scare they take leave of all moderation and common sense. If nonsense were solid, the nonsense that was talked and written about those murders would sink a Dreadnought. ... I spent the day of my return to town, and half the following night, in reinvestigating the whole case, and next day I had a long conference on the subject with the Secretary of State and the Chief Commissioner of Police. "We hold you responsible to find the murderer," was Mr. Matthews' greeting to me. My answer was to decline the responsibility. " I hold myself responsible," I said, " to take all legitimate means to find him." But I went on to say that the measures I found in operation were, in my opinion, wholly indefensible and scandalous; for these wretched women were plying their trade under definite Police protection."

Sir Melville Macnaghten, "Days of My Years", 1914

"At the time, then, of my joining the Force on 1st June 1889, police and public were still agog over the tragedies of the previous autumn, and were quite ready to believe that any fresh murders, not at once elucidated, were by the same maniac's hand. Indeed, I remember three cases - two in 1888, and one early in 1891, which the Press ascribed to the so-called Jack the Ripper, to whom, at one time or another, some fourteen murders were attributed-some before, and some after, his veritable reign of terror in 1888. ... when the double murder of 30th September took place, the exasperation of the public at the non-discovery of the perpetrator knew no bounds, and no servant-maid deemed her life safe if she ventured out to post a letter after ten o'clock at night. And yet this panic was quite unreasonable.Many residents in the East End (and some in the West!) came under suspicion of police, but though several persons were detained, no one was ever charged with these offences."

Understandably such external and internal pressure could trigger improvised and even desperate responses to it by police officials, with the English need not to appear desperate and the bureaucratic need to be deniable. Such responses have to be discerned from scraps and glimpses, because real people with real world problems are involved. And personal failure is never something people like to advertise, in any era.

We do not know what Dr. Tumblety told the police about himself when they had him, temporarily, in their clutches (except that he, obviously, did not confess). As Mayerling pointed out, Tumblety then fled at the height of the murders. It is only hindsight that the scare was about to subside, at least for six months. Whereas in late 1888 CID were faced with the following questions: what if the Irish-American was the culprit, and then again what if he wasn't? Is his jumping his bail of no consequence to the Ripper inquiry, or is it the ultimate public relations blunder? What if he kills somebody abroad?

Doing a discreet background check on this prime suspect in one of his recent haunts, one within British imperial jurisdiction, is a perfectly plausible and well-argued theory. Especially if police could clarify, face to face, whether they think this is Jack, or not. This discreet dividend from having a Whitechapel detective escort Barnett somewhat backfired because the US press instantly assumed it was Ripper connected, and consequently hyped this mission as a hot pursuit (therefore an utter failure if you do not return with this suspect in manacles) whilst other tabloid organs, even more excruciatingly, linked it to the Irish struggle.

The above is a theory based on limited and contradictory data. It might be wrong (maybe it was, quite recklessly, about Parnell after all, and everybody went into lock-down denial for the rest of the natural) but my judgement, the judgment of a single person, is that Roger Palmer is probably right. I am certainly not committed to absolutes, and neither is the author.

[David Orsam]

For the sake of completeness or even possible future criminal prosecution (as was prepared for Deeming had his trial for the murder of his second wife in Melbourne resulted in acquittal) was necessary.

As you point out, since Anderson did not move "heaven and earth" to extradite Tumblety nothing of importance must have been revealed. Yes, that is true. However, more subtly, it turned out to be true. When Andrews went to Canada Anderson would not have known if it was going to turn out to be true.

Hi Jeff,

What you seem to be saying is that a background check in Toronto was important just in case something turned up in London which might indicate that Tumblety was JTR and which might lead to Scotland Yard commencing extradition proceedings of Tumblety from the USA.

I'm saying that this was not how Scotland Yard operated and they did not carry out such (academic) research on suspects not in custody or not about to be charged. Once Tumblety was in custody, or even in the jurisdiction, such research might possibly make sense but the fact that Tumblety was in the USA when Andrews arrived in Toronto is fatal to the notion that Andrews was doing any research on Tumblety because it would have been a complete waste of his time, especially when any relevant information could have been communicated to London by cable or post by the Toronto police.

In any event, I am saying that there is no way that Anderson could have known or suspected prior to 29 November 1888 that Tumblety had anything to do Toronto so the above point is itself academic unless the argument is that Anderson wanted research carried out into Tumblety by Scotland Yard officers in every city in North America.

[David Orsam]

So, Jonathan H has made his last post on the matter and it is a very interesting one.

He tells us that Palmer’s trilogy is "one of the great long essays written on this subject" which "exhibits the highest standards of historical scholarship."

It is strange, therefore, that, in his post, Jonathan completely ignores the document which Palmer categorically states is "one of the key documents, if not the key document" (Palmer Trilogy, part 2, p.74). This, Palmer tells us, is Robert Anderson's letter to the Home Office dated 19 November 1888. According to Palmer, this letter "has gone missing" but I found it in the National Archives. Far from supporting Palmer’s claim that, in this letter, Anderson "inquired about the feasibility of sending a man to North America and was further asking whether he could use the extradition of the prisoner Roland Barnett to do it", he does no such thing and the letter simply shows that Anderson was corresponding with the Home Office about the procedure to extradite Roland Barnett to Canada at the request of the Toronto police.

Despite, Palmer being "the greatest living writer on this subject" (as Jonathan told me in another thread in February), Jonathan evidently does not think much of Palmer’s argument that Anderson got his information about Tumblety’s connection with Canada from a New York newspaper because he now speculates that Tumblety himself was Anderson’s source. Thus, he says, "We do not know what Dr. Tumblety told the police about himself when they had him", the implication being that Tumblety told the British police he had recently been in Toronto.

It is rather unlikely that Tumblety would have told the police anything considering that they were not allowed to question a suspect after they arrested him but had they managed to extract such irrelevant information from him on the gross indecency charge – which must have been at some point on or before Tumblety’s appearance before a magistrate on 7 November 1888 – an urgent cable to the Toronto police requesting information on a Dr Francis Tumblety would surely have sufficed.

According to Palmer, Anderson had no problem contacting San Francisco for information about Tumblety on or before 23 November so why not Toronto? If a "discreet background check" was so important, why not do it immediately rather than hang around waiting to see if the Canadian authorities might be prepared to pay for an officer to be sent over to Toronto and then wait a further period of time for an officer to sail slowly out there?

Jonathan is surely aware of this which is why he includes the sentence: "Especially if police could clarify, face to face, whether they think this is Jack, or not". But "face to face" with whom? Could Anderson or Andrews seriously have expected that a Scotland Yard inspector was going to be able to clarify in Toronto whether Tumblety was JTR? And how is this consistent with a "discreet background check"? It seems to have now become a full-on investigation in a foreign country!

Jonathan talks about hindsight and the pressure the police were under but seems to forget that, after Tumblety’s committal for trial on 14 November, Anderson would have expecting his trial to occur on or immediately after 19 November, at which time Tumblety could have been acquitted and walked free (and then left the country). It is easy now to think that Anderson had until the middle of December to do anything but that was not how he would have seen it at the time, in early-to-mid November, when Tumblety's trial would have been fast approaching. So any inquiries about Tumblety had to be made as a matter of urgency. There was simply no time to mess about with the slow and uncertain extradition process involving Barnett.

Earlier in this thread, Jonathan told me that "in the great British tradition of we'll give it a go and see what turns up, Andrews went" (#391). But Palmer’s argument, which Jonathan loves so much, is that "Walter Andrews was specifically sent to North America to investigate Ripper suspect Francis Tumblety" (Palmer Trilogy, part 1, p. 33), that the Roland Barnett case was "the vehicle” for sending Andrews to North America" (part 1, p.45 & part 2, p.88) that Scotland Yard were using the extradition of Roland Barnett as "a convenient prop" (part 2, p.69). We don’t get this from Jonathan’s post, no doubt because it is obvious from the evidence I have presented that Walter Andrews was sent to North America to escort Roland Barnett to Toronto. What we now see is a heavily modified version of Palmer’s argument, namely that an extra task was sort of tagged onto Andrews’ mission. Basically "while you are out there, see if you can dig up anything on Tumblety". It’s very different from what Palmer was saying.

Yet, we find serious contradiction and confusion at the heart of Jonathan’s post as to what was going on.

Earlier in this thread, Jonathan made a very clear statement to me about Walter Dew’s memoirs. He said:

"When Dew mentioned Andrews as a one of the three key Whitechapel detectives (Swanson was not a field detective) he meant the trip abroad" (#379).

In other words, Jonathan was there accepting that, until he was sent abroad on 29 November, 1888, Andrews was NOT one of the three key Whitechapel detectives and only became one due to his supposed mission to investigate Tumbelty.

Yet, Jonathan, in his most recent post, says: "Yet Andrews was one of the three, key Whitechapel field detectives according to Dew. So why send Andrews to Canada on an errand in the middle of the Terror when that might trigger another backlash either from the state or the press - or both?" He then provides some long quotations about the pressure Scotland Yard was under, apparently to show that Anderson could not afford to send one of his key Whitechapel detectives to Canada, so that Andrews’ mission must have related to the Whitechapel murders.

The contradiction is obvious. If Andrews was not yet working on the Whitechapel case, there would have been no problem in him going to America. Scotland Yard had far more than three inspectors at its disposal.

In any case, as Andrews told the press in Montreal, there was only "one inspector" assigned to the case with lots of more junior detectives. No-one in 1888 was arguing that every single Scotland Yard inspector should be devoted to solving the Whitechapel murders at the neglect of all other police work. So there never would have been any "backlash" from the state or from the press regarding a single inspector being sent to America just as there was never a backlash about Inspector Jarvis going off to chase Thomas Barton.

The argument that Dew’s inclusion of Andrews as one of the troika was a result of his trip to Canada is inconsistent with the argument that Andrews could not have been spared to go to Canada because he was one of the troika.

When it comes to evidence to support the notion that Andrews was sent to Toronto to do a background check on Tumblety, we don’t find any in Jonathan’s post. All we get is a reference to "Multiple newspaper accounts in different countries" which claimed that Andrews was "pursuing a prime Ripper suspect to North America". There is no acknowledgement, however, that all these accounts can be sourced to the single incident at the Montreal Police Headquarters when Andrews undoubtedly gave the press some information about the JTR investigation in London which was transmorgified into a story that Andrews was chasing a suspect in America, when he clearly was doing no such thing.

Jonathan concludes that his theory is based on "contradictory data" without making clear what the "data" is in support of his theory (despite me having requested a number of times for him to do so).

Back in February, he told me on another thread that I should get hold of Palmer’s trilogy and Wolf Vanderlinden’s essays and that: "You will then come to your own conclusion as to who is probably correct in their examination of the primary record".

I did get hold of both works and discovered that neither of them were correct in their examination of the primary record. Palmer’s trilogy may or may not have been "beautifully written and judiciously argued" but what I failed to find as I read through his full trilogy was any evidence at all that Andrews was doing anything Tumblety related in Toronto. I did, however, find a series of misunderstandings. Comments such as

"under the auspices of the Fugitive Offenders Act, it was entirely up to the Canadians to come and fetch Barnett." (part 2, p.67) - This is factually incorrect.

"it is clear from Lushington’s letter that Robert Anderson had inquired about the feasibility of sending a man to North America and was further asking whether he could use the extradition of the prisoner Roland Barnett to do it." (part 2, p. 75) - It is not "clear" at all and is disproved by the contents of Anderson's letter.

"A critical point is that at this stage the negotiations that would eventually bring Inspector Andrews to Canada were still ongoing. The authorities in Toronto, blissfully unaware that Barnett’s extradition papers had been filed in London on November 6th, were still scrambling to get Barnett’s extradition in order". (part 2, p.88) – This so called "critical point" is not factually correct.

One factually correct statement we do find in Palmer’s trilogy is this:

"Not a single known document filed at the C.I.D. or forwarded to the Home Office reveals what Andrews was actually investigating."

The reason for this is that Andrews was not actually investigating anything. He was escorting a prisoner to Toronto under standard extradition procedure.

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

What you seem to be saying is that a background check in Toronto was important just in case something turned up in London which might indicate that Tumblety was JTR and which might lead to Scotland Yard commencing extradition proceedings of Tumblety from the USA.

I'm saying that this was not how Scotland Yard operated and they did not carry out such (academic) research on suspects not in custody or not about to be charged. Once Tumblety was in custody, or even in the jurisdiction, such research might possibly make sense but the fact that Tumblety was in the USA when Andrews arrived in Toronto is fatal to the notion that Andrews was doing any research on Tumblety because it would have been a complete waste of his time, especially when any relevant information could have been communicated to London by cable or post by the Toronto police.

In any event, I am saying that there is no way that Anderson could have known or suspected prior to 29 November 1888 that Tumblety had anything to do Toronto so the above point is itself academic unless the argument is that Anderson wanted research carried out into Tumblety by Scotland Yard officers in every city in North America.

Hi David,

Your response is fair enough. Problems with hypotheticals - they do get complicated after awhile.

Thanks again.

Jeff

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi David.

This, obviously, will seem like a response from the distant past. Sorry, it couldn't be helped.

“but Simon Wood and Wolf Vanderlinden have gone far wider than simply discussing JTR and have moved into an area of history that is not traditionally associated with the Ripper murders.”
“…Indeed, for the sake of history, it has been essential for me to attempt to knock the ideas that you have been advancing on the head before they gain wider acceptance and transfer from the narrow world of ripperology into mainstream history, thus corrupting history itself.”

By “an area of history” I assume you mean the politics of the LVP and, specifically, Scotland Yard and British policing as it pertained to the Irish Question (which, apparently, we peons aren’t allowed to discuss according to you, the Great Arbiter and Saviour of History). After I stop laughing, allow me to point out a few things.

You are going to have a very busy time of it writing numerous articles “demolishing” “the ideas that you have been advancing” since the political situation, including the Irish Question, has been part of the Whitechapel Murders conversation since the time of the murders themselves. And, whether through ignorance of this fact or not, your statement that this area is “not traditionally associated with the Ripper murders” is woefully uninformed.

Conspiracy theories? There are indications that police officials at Scotland Yard believed that the Whitechapel murders might have been part of some political attack against the establishment. Intended, perhaps, to embarrass the Metropolitan Police, Lord Salisbury’s Tory Government or perhaps the Jewish community (religious and/or politically secular) in London’s East End. We know that Sir Charles Warren theorized that the murders were the work of “secret societies,” i.e. underground political groups. In Warren’s case he seems to have thought that left wing immigrant political groups may have been involved [See HO/144/220/A49301.D]. There are several theories based on this idea and so a whole grab bag of left wing political organizations have come under scrutiny by the Ripperological community over the years. There have also been suggestions that Czarist Russian agents committed the murders for political ends. These theories usually are connected to the possible actions of Special Branch [see the works of William Le Queux and Donald McCormick for examples]. I don’t need to go into to whole Royal Conspiracy Theory do I? Incidentally, Stephen Knight’s book is the bestselling book on the Ripper murders of all time. It makes my two articles seem like pretty small beer so, if you were looking to save history, you might want to start here.

However Irishmen, because extreme Irish nationalists had already used terror in their campaigns, and the Irish Party were, we know, also suspected by Scotland Yard. And since 1995, largely because of the Tumblety theory, first proposed by Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey (which, apparently, you are only vaguely aware of), further interest in an Irish connection has appeared.

The late Lindsay Clutterbuck, a serving Special Branch Officer, pointed out, after looking through the closed Special Branch files, that Special Branch “had more than a passing interest” in the Whitechapel Murders Investigation and that “The proposition that there was a possible Irish suspect for these murders is not as incongruous as it seems….and there are more relevant entries in the Chief Constable's Register.” Both Clutterbuck and Trevor Marriott offer some examples of Irish suspects which Special Branch were asked to investigate. [See Clutterbuck, An Accident of History?, June, 2002, Doctoral thesis, University of Portsmouth.]

Melville Macnaghten apparently suspected an Irish extremist, “the leader of a plot to assassinate Mr. Balfour at the Irish Office” [Douglas Browne, The Rise of Scotland Yard; A History, 1956, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.], likely John Walsh (member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Invincibles and the Clan na Gael) of being the Ripper. Clutterbuck supports this idea, mentioning “an extreme Irish nationalist [who was] suspected of being ‘Jack the Ripper.” Other Irishmen have been put forward as Macnaghten’s suspect including Dr. Hamilton Williams and P.J.P. Tynan.

There is also in existence a Metropolitan Police crime register index, which states, under the heading Crime, General, the notation “Whitechapel Murder Suggested Complicity of Irish Party.” The “Irish Party” was Charles Stewart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party and so this index would seem to indicate that there was some suggestion that the IPP, or elements within it, were possibly connected with the Whitechapel Murders.

Politics is very much mixed up in the history of the Whitechapel Murders and always has been. You’d better get writing.

Wolf.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

David.

One of the main flaws in your articles is the total lack of objectivity. There are no shades of grey with you, no nuance or subtlety. Everything is either black or white. You are right, your opponent (and you apparently see other theorists as your opponent) is wrong. I suppose that this is symptomatic of someone attempting to “demolish” the thoughts and ideas of others. You really can’t afford to offer both sides of the argument because that would detract from your supposed superiority. That would never do. This probably explains why you offer no background or context in your articles. An undereducated reader is your target audience and so the fairly obscure world of Victorian politics plays right into your hands.

It’s also possible, I suppose, that your grasp of this subject might be a little shaky. Hard to say whether your naïve support of Robert Anderson’s reliability is genuine (Proof? What proof? He denied it and he would never, ever tell a lie) or just a ploy to help you “demolish” concepts and ideas which are actually supported by historical facts.

With the idea that education is better than obfuscation I here offer a little chronology and context to my articles which may help others (obviously not you, of course) to understand why the theory exists that things might not have been all that they seemed in late 1888.

In December, 1888, Inspector Andrews, when interviewed by newspapers in Canada, stated that, while in Southern Ontario, he had obtained information pertaining to the Parnell case and generally confessed that that was the reason for his mission while in Canada. One of these newspapers, the Toronto Daily Mail, was Canada’s largest and most respected paper with a readership country wide. It was a pro-British, pro-Empire, conservative paper not given to sensationalism. This interview was picked up, added to, and reprinted across North America. The story eventually made its way back to London where questions about Inspector Andrews’ trip were raised in Parliament.

In 1928 Guy Logan stated in Masters of Crime [Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd. London] that “The murders ceased, I think, with the Miller (sic) Court one, and I am the more disposed to this view because, though the fact was kept a close secret at the time, I know that one of Scotland Yard’s best men, Inspector Andrews, was sent specially to America in December, 1888, in search of the Whitechapel fiend on the strength of important information, the nature of which was never disclosed.”

In 1995 Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey published The Lodger, The Arrest & Escape of Jack The Ripper [Century Ltd. London] In it they proposed that Dr. Francis Tumblety was Jack the Ripper; that he was able to evade completely incompetent Scotland Yard detectives on more than one occasion and easily slip through their bungling fingers and escape back to America. “He was Scotland Yard’s most wanted man and was soon to be followed to New York by a posse of Yard men headed by Inspector Andrews.”

The authors theorise that Inspector Andrews was the man in charge of investigating Tumblety “from an early stage” and that is why he was forced into “chasing him across the globe in a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the situation.” Unfortunately for the Yard men Tumblety once more flew the coop and they were forced to return to London empty handed.

At the end of the book, Evans and Gainey offer a list of 15 “factors pointing to [Tumblety] being the killer.” Factor 9 is “One of the three detective inspectors assigned to the Ripper hunt, Walter Andrews, was sent with other officers to pursue him to New York.”

The Evans/Gainey theory explaining Inspector Andrews trip to Southern Ontario, and its supposed connection with Tumblety, is nearly universal in works regarding the quack doctor’s candidacy for being the Ripper. It appears in numerous books, articles, television documentaries, and across the internet. It is a central plank in the Tumblety as Ripper theory. Over the years the theory has been added to and expanded slightly as new facts were uncovered. For example, the curious facts surrounding the arrest and extradition of Roland Gideon Israel Barnett have been examined and suggestions that there was some manipulation by Robert Anderson and others, in order to send Andrews to Canada, have been posited.

David, who tells us that he worries so about history (and distortions to history and how he must protect history at all costs) doesn’t even mention Evans and Gainey’s names let alone discuss their theory. For some reason he sees the most significant and widely known theory as being unimportant.

Why is any of this important? The three theories that David attempts to “demolish” in his articles all stem from Evans\Gainey or from Stewart Evans himself. Their theory stems from news reports that date from 1888. David, apparently, doesn’t want the casual reader of his articles to know about this.

As Stewart Evans is the preeminent man in Ripperology, the very top point of the Ripperological pyramid, it’s probably hard to “demolish” articles that are based on his works and theories. Better that the works being “demolished” come only from “conspiracy theorists” whose ideas lack any evidential basis (according to David).

However, my articles were based partly on Stewart’s earlier work but mostly on Inspector Andrews’ own words as to what he was doing in Southern Ontario. David strongly disagrees with both of these sources. He knows better than Andrews himself what he was doing that winter in Canada.

So that was a little chronology.

Wolf.