Why did Macnaghten deny Cutbush as a serious suspect?

[Cap'n Jack]

The Sun appeared to be in the possession of a large number of documents relating to the Cutbush case - which they really shouldn't have been - including witness statements, letters from Cutbush, letters about Cutbush and various others... and some of these must have been supplied to the Sun by a senior serving officer of the Metropolitan Police Force.
Also obvious is the fact that the newspaper had researched the Cutbush case with great care and in great detail, tracking down witnessess, work records and many other important material relating to Cutbush.
The suggestion that these very real people and incidents are the fabrication of a journalist bent on pure sensationalism is really beyond the pale.
If you want sensationalism try one of the most senior police officers of the land sitting down in his kitchen and blowing his head off with his service pistol in front of his daughter.
Funny that, eh? That the story never reached the press.
One would have thought the journalist bent on sensationalism would have had a field day with that one.

I'm reminded of a chicken scratching at an empty corn bowl.

[Robert]

I think the Sun offered to turn its dossier over to the police, if they were interested. As there were only four or five days between the last of the Sun articles and Macnaghten's memorandum, it looks as though he, at least, wasn't interested! One wonders whether he knew for a fact either
1. Thomas was not JTR (though Macnaghten doesn't mention any alibi, etc)
2. Thomas was JTR

[Roy Corduroy]

Do you know who PS McCarthy CID is?

And the other policeman's name, who is it?

Any thoughts?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Roy,

One of the versions of the Macnaghten Memorandum mentions PS McCarthy being specially drafted into Whitechapel at the time of the murders.

AP has the full skinny on PS McCarthy, who in December 1887 was a member of Littlechild's Section 'D' and in 1918 retired as a Special Branch Superintendent.

Ask AP about McCarthy's horse betting scam.

Regards,

Simon

[Chris]

Also obvious is the fact that the newspaper had researched the Cutbush case with great care and in great detail ...

If the Sun reporter had really researched the Cutbush case with any care at all, how on earth did he come to believe that Cutbush had been charged with stabbing "either four or six young women" , when in fact he had been charged with wounding only one?

If he could get such a basic fact wrong - about something that was a matter of public record and could easily be checked by referring to the Times, for example - what reliance can be placed on all the other allegations that don't come from any identifiable source and can't be independently verified?

[Stephen Thomas]

So who or what do you think was Jack the Ripper, Chris?

You see to know all about who or what it wasn't.

[Cap'n Jack]

'If the Sun reporter had really researched the Cutbush case with any care at all, how on earth did he come to believe that Cutbush had been charged with stabbing "either four or six young women" , when in fact he had been charged with wounding only one?'

er, well, perhaps because the Sun made the perfectly rational decision that the case of Colicitt was a case of mistaken identity, and that Cutbush had stabbed all the women concerned in the twin cases?
And that this opinion was provided by a senior serving officer directly involved in the twin cases?
This is not rocket science, you daft bun.

[Robert]

Chris, I believe these Sun reports are of value, but it will require a textual analysis to try to disentangle the threads. The Sun seems to have leaned on the Lloyd's article, as indeed does Macnaghten. One point : the Sun seems to have been in communication with Kate Cutbush (or with the officers who questioned her) concerning Thomas's father, for it has the correct account of the father's subsequent bigamy, while Macnaghten says that the father died. It's tempting to defend the Sun by pointing to Macnaghten's sloppiness, but I myself would rather just concentrate on the Sun, while holding fire till I've read and re-read all these articles and tried to map out the evolution of the reports.

[Robert]

Hi all

Let's not give Chris a hard time for appearing with horns and tail in our Cutbushian paradise, for we need such folk. But I myself need to spend time re-reading my holy texts, so I'll be mostly a bystander.

[Cap'n Jack]

Well said, Robert, and I agree with you... but it is Christmas and I have urgent need to roast a turkey.

[Chris]

So who or what do you think was Jack the Ripper, Chris?

You see to know all about who or what it wasn't.

You're missing my point.

What I'm saying is that I'm very sceptical about the claims made in the Sun, because many of them are unverifiable, and there are demonstrable errors in the parts that can be verified.

I really thought that after the work done by Sugden and others it was generally accepted in the field that a sceptical, scholarly approach to sources - sensationalistic newspaper reports above all - was vital.

I am no expert on Cutbush, and maybe more has been done in this direction than I'm aware of. If so, and if someone can point me towards it, I shall be only too pleased.

My problem is that every time I look at those Sun reports, I see something that looks incredibly fishy. Take the story of the swarthy man - presumably we're intended to believe it was Cutbush - who threw an elderly colleague downstairs in or around July 1888. An obvious question is whether there's any contemporary record of this assault - the Sun says that the victim later made the facts known, and his injuries must have been extremely grave, if he didn't "come to himself" until weeks after the assault. If the account were accurate, it would have been a case of attempted murder which very nearly succeeded. So what is supposed to have happened afterwards? We're not told.

But actually the little detail that strikes me as fishiest of all is that the man is said to have been "about 27" when he was appointed, in July 1888. A little earlier the article, written in February 1894, says that Cutbush (though unnamed) is "just over 33". A perfect match! But of course the Sun had it wrong. When these articles appeared, Thomas Cutbush was actually only 28.

So what are we to make of the discrepancy? Is it a genuine story about a completely different man? Is it a genuine story about Cutbush, and was his age misreported - by sheer luck - in a way that precisely matched the Sun's 5-year misconception about his age? Is it a genuine story about Cutbush, and did the Sun reporter make up the detail about the age to improve his case? Or is the whole thing sheer invention?

I don't deny that there's an interesting story to be told about Thomas Cutbush - though I don't believe he was the Ripper. But surely people who are interested in the story should want to try to find the answers to questions like these, rather than just trying to gloss them over.

[Chris]

er, well, perhaps because the Sun made the perfectly rational decision that the case of Colicitt was a case of mistaken identity, and that Cutbush had stabbed all the women concerned in the twin cases?
And that this opinion was provided by a senior serving officer directly involved in the twin cases?
This is not rocket science, you daft bun.

Please just read what the Sun report said:
"It will be remembered that this man was charged with stabbing either four or six young women."

It is a claim about how many stabbings Cutbush was charged with, and moreover it is clearly referring to facts that the writer believed were in the public domain - not information supplied to him privately by a police officer, and not his own reinterpretation of history.

Quite clearly it was a simple mistake on the writer's part. Otherwise he would have said something like "the man was charged with stabbing a young woman, but we are reliably informed that in fact he stabbed three or five [?!?] more"!

[Chris]

Well said, Robert, and I agree with you... but it is Christmas and I have urgent need to roast a turkey.

Well maybe we can call a truce in the yuletide spirit and agree that Robert is an eminently suitable person to do the disentangling of the Sun reports.

[Roy Corduroy]

May the Truce be with You.

AP has the full skinny on PS McCarthy, who in December 1887 was a member of Littlechild's Section 'D' and in 1918 retired as a Special Branch Superintendent.

Ask AP about McCarthy's horse betting scam.

Cap'n, how bout the CID man, comprende?

Roy

[Natalie Severn]

It seems to me that we can put The Sun"s articles to one side for a minute and stay solely with the facts as we know them from the records from Broadmoor .
Thomas Cutbush was sent to Broadmoor for feloniously cutting and wounding Florence Johnson with intent to do grievous bodily harm and with attempting to wound Isabel Anderson.The knife produced in court was one with a six inch long blade-VERY SHARP-with a curved point and had been purchased by Thomas Cutbush in Houndsditch/The Minories not long before the event
. A memo in his medical notes says :"Through the carelessness of the attendant he escaped . Smeared mud on his face to avoid detection.Came home at midnight.Man at Cottons Wharf says he was there when assault alleged was committed." Also in his medical notes are references to "overstudy" of medical text books,references to the belief Thomas had that Dr Brooks was trying to poison him and that Lord Grimthorpe was in on the conspiracy.That he took to wandering the streets at night ,returning covered in mud or-according to ONE REPORT covered -in BLOOD.
Also in the notes."He was taken to Lambeth clinic but escaped.While on the loose,a girl was stabbed and another threatened".

The notes accompanying him to Broadmoor suggest he was dangerous.Another note on his medical records states he was "very insane"[in 1891 entry],a danger to staff,other patients and even to his adoring mother.He was convinced others were plotting to harm him and fantasised aloud about getting his hands on a knife so he could "rip up" the staff and patients.Mr Bailey ,a night attendant said that "Cutbush had said that if he had a knife suitable for the job he would rip up attendants and anyone else soon as look at them".Another report states that attendant Slater was told by Cutbush at dinner twice that he would stick a knife into anyone of us if he had one.
On another occasion -" in May 1891 another attendant was talking to a Mr Gilbert Cooper when without a word Cutbush struck Cooper a violent blow in the face"
I believe that whatever Chris says about The Sun and its accuracy there is ample evidence in the Broadmoor archives so far produced on Cutbush to exculpate The Sun from a charge of misrepresentation regarding Thomas Cutbush and indeed that the picture that emerges about him from The Sun"s reports tallies very well indeed with the picture beginning to emerge from the Broadmoor authorities.Moreover it is a picture of a man whose whereabouts were never ascertained by police at the time of the Whitechapel murders.A man who knew Whitechapel through working there.A man,who like Robert Napper ,suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and who like him was kept in Broadmoor because he was considered too dangerous to send anywhere else.