Why did Macnaghten deny Cutbush as a serious suspect?

[Cap'n Jack]

Oh but I must unbutton me chemise and display all me wares for a mere six pence, and then get 'orribly murdered by a corn flakes packet?
I'll go to bed and get murdered in me sleep.
Roy, when I remember what I know you'll be the first to know.
'ave you seen my file, it's enormous.

[Cap'n Jack]

And it is wise to remember, Natalie, good post by the by, that I have yet to see the Broadmoor archives, and when I do... ?

[Chris]

Natalie

Your point being what, precisely?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Chris,

Are you Ben in another persona?

Regards,

Simon

[Natalie Severn]

My point being that having taught history in state schools my training guided me to examine SEVERAL sources---not just one or two to try to establish an "approximation" of the truth on any historical data,which is usually the nearest we will get after the passage of many years.That history more often than not depends on the scribe and whose interests he or she is defending,than the truth per se.
I am not suggesting we depend on the Sun for our information about Cutbush but that we should try to analyse and interpret that information in the light of other source material we may have access to,we should try to match it up with what has so far emerged from The Broadmoor archives for example,medical records which are likely to contain the least bias and subjective judgement.This is what is meant by scholarly research.

[Chris]

I am not suggesting we depend on the Sun for our information about Cutbush but that we should try to analyse and interpret that information in the light of other source material we may have access to,we should try to match it up with what has so far emerged from The Broadmoor archives for example,medical records which are likely to contain the least bias and subjective judgement.This is what is meant by scholarly research.

Crikey, isn't that what I've been saying all along - that we should try to verify the Sun's claims from proper contemporary sources?

But you must realise that just because the Broadmoor records say that Cutbush was dangerous to the public - which opinion could obviously be justified by the fact that he had (or was believed to have) stuck a knife into a girl's bottom, or that he once hit an attendant in the face, or tried to bite his mother - that doesn't make everything the Sun said about him true.

You made a big play previously of asking me to have "the courtesy" to explain why I was sceptical about the Sun reports, but, once again, now that I've stated a difficulty, you've ignored it.

What do you think about the story of someone (Cutbush?) throwing a colleague downstairs, and apparently rendering him at best semi-conscious for a period of weeks? If true, how did he escape a charge of attempted murder? And what do you think about the strange business of the ages?

[Cap'n Jack]

'What do you think about the story of someone (Cutbush?) throwing a colleague downstairs, and apparently rendering him at best semi-conscious for a period of weeks? If true, how did he escape a charge of attempted murder?'

Try... having an uncle called Executive Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush of the Commissioner's Office of Scotland Yard?

[Chris]

Try... having an uncle called Executive Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush of the Commissioner's Office of Scotland Yard?

But I thought Charles was now known not to have been Thomas's uncle.

[Natalie Severn]

Ap and Chris ,
Will respond later to your points Chris.
However,if we pause for a bit and try to think this through ,this very strange detail Police Chief Macnaghten provides,in his 1894 memorandum, on his senior colleague from the Commissioner"s office, Supt. Charles Cutbush , may well be the very "breakthrough" we need here.
Sir Melville Macnaghten refers to Supt Charles Cutbush as being the "uncle" of Thomas Cutbush.Now if ,say for arguments sake,he was actually a rather different type of relative,say one who had got his leg over with Thomas"s mum thirty years before,then its perfectly reasonable to see him ,perhaps in the role of absent but loving father or even,if Thomas"s mother was pressurising him as his ex lover -seeing himself as an about to be thrown out "husband" ----and father of a Jack the Ripper suspect----- going off hurriedly to have a quiet word with Macnaghten or maybe his Lambeth neighbour Abberline--- or whoever would prove most helpful in Scotland Yard and telling a little white lie by calling his illegitimate son his "nephew"? They would be unlikely to question him about it because he had the same surname after all - indeed all these Cutbush folk may we well have harked from the same distant "Cutbush" clan .
Imagine the scandal in the family,imagine the look on his daughter"s face if she learnt in 1894 that the Sun"s "Jack the Ripper" suspect, Thomas Cutbush,was actually her half -brother!
No wonder poor "Uncle" Charles Cutbush threw in the towel,took a gun to his head in front of his daughter,and ended it all!

[Robert]

Nats, it may be that Thomas called him uncle if he was a family friend. I'm not sure about the bed-hopping, which I guess we will never be able to prove. I don't think the Sun mentions this police uncle relationship, which one would have expected them to do if it were true. Macnaghten mentions it, but he's so unreliable that it's difficult to know what to make of it. Supt Cutbush's illness seems to have commenced around the time Thomas got into trouble, and the families did live reasonably close to each other. I have not so far been able to establish a link, e.g. the families don't seem to have shared the same doctor.

[Natalie Severn]

You know Robert,I dont think we can have it every which way with Macnaghten"s reference.
The Sun did not ,actually "name" Thomas Cutbush as Jack the Ripper in their five February 1894 articles.
But Macnaghten chose to in his 1894 Report which you will remember was written only days after these articles hit the press ,not only referred to the Sun"s suspect by name but the report also singled out and further "named "one of the yard"s very senior men,Supt Charles Cutbush ,as being the "UNCLE" of the Sun"s suspect for "Jack the Ripper".
Now if there was nothing too much to any of this Uncle relationship about Supt Charles Cutbush,you really do have to ask yourself why on earth Macnaghten should take it upon himself to have the Sun"s Ripper suspect identified by a blood tie with one of the yard"s own men? Why would he do such a thing if all Supt Charles Cutbush was was "a friend" of the family?
Think the effect such a bizzare "revelation" could have on the wife and daughter of Charles Cutbush- being associated by both the family "name" as well as a close family relationship with "Jack the Ripper" -it could have been pretty dreadful.
So why say it unless it was either true or a Macnaghten using a euphemism for some slightly off beat relationship that might be threatening to come to light?

[Cap'n Jack]

I'll repeat me good self:

So it's a great shame that we cannot do what Macnaghten must have done to confirm that Charles and Thomas were indeed uncle and nephew.
That is push himself off his desk, walk the few feet from his private office to the Commissioner's Office next door and bellow at Chief Executive Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush sat at his desk:
'Damn it Charles! Is this lunatic your nephew or not?'
Now there were only two answers that Charles could have given.

[Robert]

Hi Nats

Well, the memorandum was confidential, so Macnaghten need not have feared that there would be any adverse consequences for the family members concerned. The reference to the nephew-uncle relationship, which I take it Macnaghten genuinely believed, was probably put in to warn the relevant minister "if you have to answer questions on this, remember it's hot stuff, because he was the nephew of the Supt."

AP, by 1894 Macnaghten would have had to knock at uncle Charles's front door. I don't suppose that Macnaghten had been involved in the 1891 investigation. But yes, considering the nature of the newspaper allegations, and Macnaghten's belief that Thomas was the Supt's nephew, it is amazing that he did not bother to check - unless as Natalie suggests, he did, and uncle Charles actually confirmed it in some way.

[Cap'n Jack]

True, Robert, but by 1896 he would have had to knock on his coffin.
'Cask Closed'.

[Natalie Severn]

It seems pretty obvious to me Robert that page after page of the report-Macnaghten"s 1894 memorandum- written when it was in the wake of the Sun"s revelations is concerned mainly to deflect this whole bothersome business of Jack the Ripper well away from Thomas Cutbush and his poor old Uncle ,Supt Charles Cutbush. So what we appear to get from Macnaghten,in the desperate need to name someone other than a Cutbush as Jack the Ripper,is him almost taking names out of a hat----any name remotely at hand -be the named one dead , alive or in the bin ,would do.
In his report, Macnaghten gets rather muddled over dates,suspects occupations and even the time when his suspect "disappears" from view., Hence we have first Druitt ,-but was he a doctor or was he a barrister or a teacher or all three or what? Was he forty or nearer thirty?A cricket playing batchelor of 29 with no known sexual relationships at all , - his family decided he was "sexually insane" [ mother had recently been in the bin] anyway obviously a very dangerous character-,Mac would have us believe, with sex on the brain, dead by his own hand ----clearly then a homicidal maniac ;
Next we have Kosminski -actually in the bin since __[---oh --er 1889? 1890? 1891 ?] but anyway Mac tells us he was obviously homicidal- he was Jewish, poor, and masturbated after all. Last we have Ostrog who was a dangerous criminal anyway- a likely Ripper then----even though at the time of the murders he was in jail in France?All these ,yes each of these, far more likely to be Jack the Ripper than Thomas Cutbush. Well thankyou very much Sir Melville-for that garbled piece of disinformation.