Why did Macnaghten deny Cutbush as a serious suspect?

[Cap'n Jack]

It is faintly amusing that Chris's concerns about the wound inflicted on the victim was not shared by the victim's father, who saw it as a very serious matter indeed, and wrote a letter to the press expressing his concerns, part of which I quote here:
'Pardon me for suggesting an idea which has probably occurred to you in connection with the recent stabbing cases in this neighbourhood. The dagger which was found on the man now under detention is just such a one as was probably used with such dreadful success at Whitechapel, and there are several points of resemblance in the cases although those now before us are now trivial compared with the magnitude of the Whitechapel tragedies. This fellow approaches his victims from the back, and with such a weapon could very easily commit a Whitechapel murder and escape without showing any blood marks. He is catlike in his approach, very fleet of foot, and he can approach his victim unheard, and if true that he has a second dagger and revolver at home, it is probable they are intended for use in the event of an attempted capture. I think you will find on inquiry that one of the Whitechapel victims was seen in company of a man with a light coat shortly before the murder. His return - after a long absence with bleeding feet is very suggestive, and shows that his operations are performed some distance from _____.'

Nice to have you back, Robert. I trust your eyes are better than mine!

[Chris]

AP

I don't know what you mean about my "concerns". I simply asked for information and made a rather obvious comment - that the wound seems to have been a superficial one.

As for the letter you quote, which you say was written to the press by Florence Johnson's father - it was actually printed in the Sun of 15 February 1894, where it is claimed it was written to the police by one "F K" , described as "the father of one of the girls stabbed". (Recall that the journalist mistakenly thought Cutbush had stabbed six girls.)

I'm not actually sure why you quote it, as it doesn't say anything whatsoever about the wounds inflicted (by Cutbush, Colicott or whoever). If it's anything other than a journalistic invention, it sounds more like a letter written by a concerned member of the public than like a letter from a victim's father. Do you really think a victim's father would write a letter to the police beginning "Pardon me for suggesting an idea which has probably occurred to you in connection with the recent stabbing cases in this neighbourhood"?

[Cap'n Jack]

Chris, because Colicitt was dismissed by the Treasury into his father's custody it still remains unclear to us exactly how many women Cutbush stabbed in that brief spree; so given the information the Sun had available at that time, supplied to them by a senior officer of the Met, their efforts should not be disregarded or cast aside in such simple fashion.
The fact of the matter is that the Treasury attempted to pass the blame of all six victims onto young Thomas - which he strongly denied - by claiming mistaken identification.
Thomas himself is best judge and jury:

'"You must know," said he, "that they say I am Jack the Ripper - but I am not, though all their inside are open and their bowels are all out. I am a medical man, you know, but not Jack the Ripper - you must not think I am. But they do, and they are after me, and the runners are after me, for they want the £500 which is offered for my capture, and I have only been cutting up girls and laying them out."

[Robert]

AP, I will email you in a few minutes about the case notes.

[Stephen Thomas]

Thomas himself is best judge and jury:

'"You must know," said he, "that they say I am Jack the Ripper - but I am not, though all their inside are open and their bowels are all out. I am a medical man, you know, but not Jack the Ripper - you must not think I am. But they do, and they are after me, and the runners are after me, for they want the £500 which is offered for my capture, and I have only been cutting up girls and laying them out."

Yes AP, a telling contemporary quote and yet so many people think that Cutbush is a total non-starter in the Ripper Suspect Stakes. Weird.

[Chris]

AP

Perhaps at least we can agree that there is no evidence that Cutbush stabbed, or attempted to stab, anyone other than Johnson and Anderson. And that even if - despite all appearances - the Sun was quoting a genuine letter written by the father of one of the victims, there is no indication that "F K" was the father of Johnson.

As for the "quotation" about Jack the Ripper which you attribute to Thomas Cutbush, again this comes from the Sun reports of 1894, where it is put into the mouth of a mysterious stranger with a concealed face, speaking - supposedly - to an equally mysterious witness known only as "W K". Who knows where any of this stuff really comes from?

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks Robert, and no worries, all will be done when I'm sober.

[Natalie Severn]

Chris,
The Sun Newspaper of 1888 was a very serious newspaper on a par with the likes of The Daily Telegraph.It is therefore unlikely that reporters made claims that were unfounded.
Moreover,there are records showing that the MP Henry Labouchere was shown the material that Inspector Race had gathered on Thomas Cutbush after he had arrested him and which was used by The Sun in their articles.Labouchere was no more convinced,however, that Thomas Cutbush was Jack the Ripper, after reading it ,than he had been after reading the articles in The Sun.The reason he gave was that the evidence was still purely circumstantial and needed to be much more concrete and substantial.
In the case of Robert Napper ,it was much the same-ie until DNA came along.The police had ,according to Paul Britton,their crime profiler , closed minds about Napper, who they had interviewed and even called to see at his flat when he was out,they dismissed him partly on the basis of witness statements saying the suspect was shorter than Napper"s 6ft 2ins,and partly because they totally disagreed with Britton that the man who killed Rachel Nickell was the same man who had killed Samantha Bissett and her child, Jazmine.The police position was clearly that they did not have,as far as they could see, "the same signature"-----and how tragically wrong they were to be proved in that ! Rachel Nickell was a frenzied knife attack ,while Samantha Bisset was mutilated and left in much the same arrangement as Mary Kelly.

[Chris]

Natalie

You've often pointed out that there's no real evidence - or rather no evidence that's tangible to us - to associate suspects such as Aaron Kozminski with the Whitechapel Murders. And - I hope - I've always agreed with you.

I just think the same thing has to apply to Cutbush. Much of the Sun reports read to me like cheap melodrama. I wouldn't accept a word of them without proper contemporary documentation. I should love to see a critical analysis of those reports with reference to outside evidence - set against a similar analysis of the Cutbush portions of the Macnaghten Memoranda. I don't know whether that's ever been done.

At the moment it seems to me as though the Cutbushite(s) is/are bent on accepting every word of the Sun reports as Gospel Truth - which they are obviously not.

[Robert]

Hi Chris

I don't mind being a Cutbusher, but "Cutbushite" has an unhappy termination.

[Natalie Severn]

I believe the MP Henry Labouchere,was a man of integrity.He had no quarrel we know of with the Sun"s accounts as such ,having seen with his own eyes the evidence Inspector Race apparently laid before him.The problem he had was with the circumstantial nature of the material on Cutbush.Likewise ,it appears, Macnaghten-he doesnt deny what the Sun is saying dont forget---and this is important,because he dismisses the cutouts Cutbush did,he dismisses the "malicious wounding" ie the knife attacks of the young women----he dismisses them as mere jabs? Then why was Cutbush brought before a court?Why was he sent to Broadmoor -a hospital for the criminally insane?
No Macnaghten I am sure ,simply refused to see The Ripper as anyone other than picture he had in his mind of a man whose murders "intensified" with each killing---therefore such a man wouldnt have gone in for such lesser knife attacks three years later.But that is to misunderstand the ebb and flow of paranoid schizophrenia and its varied manifestations.Thomas Cutbush,in Broadmoor, was considered a very dangerous patient.That isnt The Sun talking----its some of the information we now have on him from the recently released files.

[Chris]

Natalie

If your approach is to accept every word of the Sun reports as true because Henry Labouchere "had no quarrel we know of with" them, I'm not sure whether much more can usefully be said.

I would be sceptical about anything I read in the press about the Whitechapel Murders, unless it was backed up by proper contemporary evidence. These Sun reports are much more problematical than most. But to each their own ...

[Natalie Severn]

Chris,

But Macnaghten also endorsed The Sun"s statements by replying to them the way he did in his 1894 memorandum.The fact that he didnt "agree"" with The Sun"s "conclusions" that Thomas Cutbush and the Whitechapel murderer were one and the same is neither here nor there in our argument.
Labouchere too endorses the Sun"s "statements" but finds their evidence inconclusive despite all their efforts!
But the Hospital for the criminally insane,Broadmoor,where Thomas was incarcerated after his 1891 knife attacks on the two women we know about, totally confirms that Thomas Cutbush was the dangerously insane individual the Sun discusses, and as such he could indeed have been Jack the Ripper.The Sun doesnt prove he was,nor do the Broadmoor files so far anyway----but the files have begun to reveal a character such as The Sun described in those articles ---and such a character, by way of his violent eruptions and paranoid psychosis,could have been the Ripper.
BTW, The Sun wasnt the only paper -there were several other accounts in different newspapers at the time.

[Chris]

Natalie

You claim Macnaghten "endorsed" the Sun's claims?

Bizarre.

[Natalie Severn]

Natalie

You claim Macnaghten "endorsed" the Sun's claims?

Bizarre.

-----it was clearly getting late when I wrote that----perhaps a better way of putting it would be that Macnaghten appears to have "accepted" the Sun"s "story" while "refuting" their conclusions about Cutbush being the Ripper.

Clearly Chris, Macnaghten had no understanding whatsoever about the vagaries of where a paranoid schizophrenic"s psychosis might take him.
He is convinced instead that the Ripper"s killings were performed by a "sexually" insane killer----whatever that may mean.
Robert Napper, the "virgin rapist" and murderer of Rachel Nickell, Samantha Bissett and Jazmine ,has the same baffling illness as Thomas Cutbush and stalked women,committed violent gruesome and frenzied murders them while on other women he committed acts which included non-penetrative rape, unsolved knife attacks that police now believe he got away with ,all these police,its worth noting were, like Macnaghten, off on leads that led them away from their killer,rather than towards him-----and stubbornly refusing to accept that the " Jack the Ripper style killing" of Samantha Bissett had anything to do with the killing of Rachel Nickell etc.
I am a bit at a loss over what you are saying over Thomas Cutbush.Are you saying Thomas Cutbush was not paranoid,that he was not locked up in Broadmoor because he was violent and a danger to women ?