Why did Macnaghten deny Cutbush as a serious suspect?

[Cap'n Jack]

Stewart, were a long campaign but I smell victory.
As you know my work was already in the review print run prior to Nick Warren's article about Cutbush in 1993.
Just thought I'd correct that one.
My understanding is that only 3 files from the Cutbush files have been studied so far, leaving another 17, so perhaps it is better not to fire a cannon yet, or even jump a gun.
As you say the original 'Sun' articles themselves represent a large degree of speculation, especially the missing paragraph from the library copy which I believe you do possess; something I asked you to contribute to the discussion a long time ago.
However it is the response to those articles which is of greater interest; and as I've always said why should the most senior police officer of the land feel obliged to stand up and defend a complete and utter maniac from speculative new reports, especially when that maniac is confined for life under an HMP order in Broadmoor?
No reason whatsoever.
By the time the Sun published its story and Macnaghten wrote his memo, Cutbush was well beyond the reach of the law, and as you quite rightly point out if Cutbush was indeed Jack the Ripper there was buggar all anyone could do about it... apart from Her Majesty of course.
I suppose the crutch piece of the discussion has to be Executive Superintendent Cutbush's role in the entire affair, which neither you, me nor anyone else yet understands, and it is useless to pretend we do.
I know you'll agree with me that the suicide of such a high ranking officer is an extremely rare event in the history of British policing. I know of only one other, which was very recent. Without the risk of being wrong I would suggest that Charles Henry Cutbush's suicide is the most singular event in a hundred years of British policing.
My explanation for the bizarre and unique event is that Charles did the honourable thing to compensate for some great dishonour that he had part engineered.
You said earlier that a person who commits suicide must be insane.
Well Stewart, I couldn't agree more.

[Natalie Severn]

The calm,cold intelligent schizoid personality

Stewart,
The only thing that remains reasonably dependable in the case of a person who develops the illness still labelled as paranoid schizophrenia-as in the Oxford Medical Dictionary, is the basic personality which is still medically termed "schizoid".
All manifestations of the illness that may develop in a person having the original basic personality-type of schizoid into the psychotic paranoid schizophrenic can differ hugely.
It is indeed quite typical for a person to go from having a good work record,as Thomas Cutbush did when he was a clerk in the Tea Company at The Minories up to 1888,[ie according to Macnaghten],to beginning to talk , think and behave rather oddly as has been mentioned with regard to the unexpected ,murderous attack Cutbush made on an elderly man,a work colleague,who he is alleged to have waited in hiding for and hrown down the stairs,simply because the man commented on him looking at himself in a mirror rather often-or the unexpected physical assault he made later on a warder at Broadmoor he saw talking on a pathway.
Schizophrenia is a baffling illness even today for when a sufferer is "in remission" they can appear very cool calm and collected,and even when in the throes of a psychosis when they believe they are hearing voices in the night and other such bizarre delusions,they can present truly extraordinary "sang froid" ESPECIALLY when committing a violent act.The prevailing view that the norm is for such a sufferer to be "foaming at the mouth" is totally inaccurate and misleading.They are not,but rather amongst the coolest killers on the planet.
The situation viz a viz Thomas Cutbush in 1891 is very difficult to determine.He could have been visibly insane as Macnaghten maintains,but what is of crucial importance here is that he could have been having very different "delusions" than he was having in 1888 .His voices may not have been ordering him to "clean up the streets" this time but rather to stab any woman wearing a red shawl or an woman with a prominent behind etc .His mental health too would be deteriorating and the episodes of sanity or remission fewer .
However,even at this point Cutbush is recorded as having had a reasonable conversation with the rector of a church on the Embankment when he was on the run from the law in March 1891.
Best
Norma

[Trevor Marriott]

I totally agree with Stewart and in addittion would add that the evidence i would not even class as circumstancial

[Stewart P Evans]

'A Danger to Others'

However , the research that Nick Warren carried out in 1993, Stewart, would not have been informed by the recent snippets we have had revealed through glimpses of the recently accessed Berkshire Record Office Files during the last few weeks.Moreover,as I understand, only three of the files on him -out of some twenty files that exist on him- have so far been made accessible,and yet these snippets tell me all I need to know,to confirm for me that Thomas Cutbush could indeed have been Jack the Ripper.
Indeed just one of these snippets is suffice,and that is that he was considered "a danger to others",which if you recall, Aaron Kosminski"s records did not consider him to be.

Norma, I haven't seen anything in the recent information released from Broadmoor that convinces me that Cutbush might have been the Ripper.

Just about every inmate of Broadmoor would have been considered a danger to others - that is why they were in there! But the Ripper was no foaming at the mouth lunatic - he was able to carry out a series of murders and escape without leaving a clue. Most serial killers display no obvious signs of being a danger to others which is why they often get away with it for so long. Cutbush was a rather obvious head case - and I now await the arguments for the deterioration of his condition.

However, take it as a fact, no one is ever going to prove, nor get anywhere near proving, that he was Jack the Ripper. It's just another example of bulding up a circumstantial case where no hard evidence exists.

[Stewart P Evans]

Speculation

'Macnaghten, of course, described Druitt as 'sexually insane' and Ostrog as having been 'detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac'. As we are discussing Macnaghten's citing of these other men as 'more likely' suspects than Cutbush then, obviously, whether or not they actually had 'serious mental health issues' is not relevant to the argument'.
I think otherwise, Stewart, for Macnaghten was acutely aware of the mental health issues within the Cutbush family, including that of one of his most senior and most public officers; then obliquely he dances out known criminals who might have been Jack the Ripper, whilst obscuring the criminal activity of the man he is dismissing.
I imagine myself as the most senior police officer involved in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, five years on with still no arrest, and with five memos in my information system telling me that Peter Sutcliffe must be the Yorkshire Ripper, so I sit down and write my own memo, dismissing Sutcliffe as the killer, because I have a tape recorded message telling me that the Yorkshire Ripper is from Newcastle.
The 'lie' doesn't have to belong to the person promoting it, for he was fed with it.

How we interpret what we know depends, of course, on 'where we are coming from,' and we all know where you are 'coming from' AP.

Cutbush was detained in an asylum for the criminally insane and there was absolutely no chance of either proving he was the Ripper or even taking him to court. So, even if Macnaghten and the Metropolitan Police hierarchy were overly concerned about it (and I doubt they were), it would not become a problem for the simple reason that Cutbush was insane could not be proved to be the Ripper (even if he was, and in my opinion he wasn't) nor could he be named publicly as the Ripper (no evidence existed and this hadn't been proved). It was all unsubstantiated newspaper speculation.

So all we are left with is the scenario that a mentally ill inmate of an asylum was being claimed to be the Ripper by a single sensationalist newspaper. Hardly a matter for great concern to the police apart from being another of the many attacks on their failure to capture the murderer.

[Robert]

A variety of motives and behaviours, Nats? In other words : let's not put this dangerous lunatic in a straitjacket.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Natalie Severn]

Macnaghten took the view that the Whitechapel murderer had five victims who he murdered because of his sexual insanity.Not only that but he believed the sexual insanity was of a mounting intensity which culminated in the murder and mutilation of Mary Kelly.
Whatever Macnaghten had been told about Druitt"s sexual insanity matched the picture of the ripper he had in his mind viz a depraved sexual killer whose lust intensified with each killing. Clearly this did not match what was known to Macnaghten in 1894 about Thomas Cutbush.
Macnaghten stated in his memorandum that "the fury of the mutilations "increased" in each case"-----and "the appetite[of the killer] was sharpened
by indulgence".And he added ,"It seems ,then,highly improbable that the murderer would have suddenly stopped in November "88 and been content to recommence operations by merely prodding a girl behind some 2 years and 4 months afterwards" .
And there we have the problem ,it rests in Macnaghten"s conception of the killer.
But it is known that when paranoid schizophrenics such as Thomas Cutbush become psychotic they do not work in that way if they turn into killers,and,lets be clear,if they do turn to killing, these are the killers who are capable of performing the most cold blooded,most gory and gruesome murders of all-the ones that hit the headlines of National newspapers.But, they can not be called "sexual serial killers" per se.Because,like the Ripper,there is rarely any "connection" or sign of penetration or other sexual activity.However,what there may be,and often is, is evidence of some punitive obsession connected to the sexual activity or women"s reproductive organs.As I wrote above,quotations from the Bible are often given to support and justify such obsession.And to make matters more confusing each episode of psychosis may take a different form so that it is possible to learn that such a killer may be engaged in frenzied stabbings while "obeying"his voices regarding one set of instructions, coolly pushing a work colleague who has annoyed him down a flight of stairs on another occasion ----and breaking his neck as nearly happened when Thomas Cutbush did just that to one of his colleagues at work who was in a coma for two weeks as a result-----while on another occasion randomly stabbing women in the street .
Jack the Ripper could well have been this type of killer.He was not necessarily the sexually insane killer of "progressive intensity" imagined by Macnaghten in his 1894 memorandum.

[aspallek]

Stewart,

Regarding Macnaghten's naming of Druitt, do you now believe his primary source of information was MP Farquharson?

Although, Farquharson's ramblings would have been reported to Macnaghten, and I believe the memorandum displays a bit of dependence on Farquharson, I still tend to believe Macnaghten's primary source of information was other than the MP.

Still, the identification of Farquharson clearly points to Druitt's being named as a suspect as early as February 1891, three years before the memorandum was penned and barely two years after the murders.

[Cap'n Jack]

'Macnaghten, of course, described Druitt as 'sexually insane' and Ostrog as having been 'detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac'. As we are discussing Macnaghten's citing of these other men as 'more likely' suspects than Cutbush then, obviously, whether or not they actually had 'serious mental health issues' is not relevant to the argument'.
I think otherwise, Stewart, for Macnaghten was acutely aware of the mental health issues within the Cutbush family, including that of one of his most senior and most public officers; then obliquely he dances out known criminals who might have been Jack the Ripper, whilst obscuring the criminal activity of the man he is dismissing.
I imagine myself as the most senior police officer involved in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, five years on with still no arrest, and with five memos in my information system telling me that Peter Sutcliffe must be the Yorkshire Ripper, so I sit down and write my own memo, dismissing Sutcliffe as the killer, because I have a tape recorded message telling me that the Yorkshire Ripper is from Newcastle.
The 'lie' doesn't have to belong to the person promoting it, for he was fed with it.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Stewart,
Thankyou for your response.I totally agree with you about the reason Macnaghten composed his memorandum and it is very helpful that you have reiterated it here.
Thankyou also for telling me about the Ripperana article. I did not know that Nick Warren had written at any length about Thomas Cutbush in that magazine,which I believe he edited,I only knew about the information provided on casebook,The Sun"s 1894 articles on him where they named him as The Ripper[virtually],and ofcourse AP Wolf"s book on him entitled "Jack the Myth".
However , the research that Nick Warren carried out in 1993, Stewart, would not have been informed by the recent snippets we have had revealed through glimpses of the recently accessed Berkshire Record Office Files during the last few weeks.Moreover,as I understand, only three of the files on him -out of some twenty files that exist on him- have so far been made accessible,and yet these snippets tell me all I need to know,to confirm for me that Thomas Cutbush could indeed have been Jack the Ripper.
Indeed just one of these snippets is suffice,and that is that he was considered "a danger to others",which if you recall, Aaron Kosminski"s records did not consider him to be.
Now I have worked in the Art Therapy section of a large psychiatric hospital in the North West.There were patients there who suffered from the kind of paranoid delusions Thomas Cutbush is said to have suffered from viz,imagining doctors to be trying to poison them and most were fairly harmless as Aaron Kosminski was recorded as being.However,where it was written that a patient was a danger to others,as was the case with Thomas Cutbush,great care was taken to protect others from the consequences of a "lapse".In one particular case,a man of thirty who was making excellent progress with some of the modern drugs now available,was allowed to go home for the weekend.Without warning he went into the shed,found an axe and chopped his wife"s head off.
Another case ,happened more recently in North Wales.Another man who had been considered of some danger to others had been allowed day release,while making excellent progress taking his medication,but upon release he had stopped taking it.He suddenly took himself off in his car to the beach ,some thirty miles away, where he came across an old man walking his dog,--- a complete stranger to him.Without any hesitation he took out a knife and stabbed the poor old man to death in a frenzied stabbing.Usually such killings are called "command killings" because the person who carries them out believes themselves to be under instruction ,or "hearing voices" from a higher power such as God,instructing the person to carry out a killing,stabbing,mutilation.The person often has a number of obscure quotes from the Bible to support the "act"----and such quotes often include material referring to "sexual sin" and ,where it is women who are injured or sometimes their murder victims ,there is often a reference for the need for the "reproductive organs" to be removed and" thoroughly cleaned of sin"- that type of thing often seems to haunt the psychotic episodes of those diagnosed as dangerously insane.Its also worth remembering that the manifestation of the psychosis can vary from one episode to the next, so on one occasion he believes himself to have to go out and remove women"s organs,whereas on another occasion he may be "instructed" to turn all the gas taps on and blow up all the flats in his block---an actual event prevented from tragedy just in the nick of time by fire brigade and police!
Anyway,I am pretty certain Thomas Cutbush experienced " psychotic episodes" and far from being a harmless "imbecile" he was in truth a very dangerous man indeed which was why he was a lifer in Broadmoor and not a milder mental patient such as those who found themselves sent to Colney Hatch or Leavesdon. Certainly he can not be readily dismissed as Macnaghten appears to have done,but then perhaps Macnaghten knew nothing about Thomas Cutbush,apart from what he read in the Sun National Newspaper!

Best

Norma


Celesta,
I hope the above explains what I am talking about.

[Natalie Severn]

"Why did Macnaghten deny Cutbush as a serious suspect?"

Because he is an unlikely suspect. It seems to me that you are suggesting a cover-up. There's nothing that I've read that puts Cutbush above Druitt or Kosminski, or even on their level.

Mike

Mike,
I was not suggesting a cover up,though I assume there must have been concern regarding the stress a fellow police chief,viz Supt Charles Cutbush,would have suffered among his collegues in the Commissioner"s office at Scotland Yard,especially since Macnaghten makes specific mention of Thomas Cutbush being his nephew.
No,it is much more to do with the lack of attention to the nature and severity of the illness Thomas Cutbush suffered from ,and that has been "minimised" over the years,together with his random stabbings of women in the streets of London,that gives me cause for concern.
But I will address this more fully in another post.
Best
Norma

[Celesta]

I think that the three alternatives were named to show how easy it was to retrospectively nominate someone, especially someone with mental problems, as the Ripper. As we know Macnaghten admitted there was nothing by way of proof against anyone.

That's true; he didn't. So it would have been just as easy for the Sun to nominate Cutbush, or some other unstable person, as it was for Macnaghten to promote Aaron and company. As it turned out, they didn't need to release the Memorandum because there was not the hoopla about Cutbush that they anticipated could happen.

[Stewart P Evans]

Suspects

Stewart
did Ostrog and Druitt have serious mental health issues?
Ostrog has always struck me as a determined, cunning and quite daring criminal who knew his onions and appeared to be able to cope with any situation or hardship. I fear the only hard evidence against him being that he was a rotten johnny foreigner.
Druitt on the other hand appeared to have been a whimsical soul, perhaps suffering from repressed feelings of homosexuality, which perhaps drove him to committ suicide... but surely that doesn't mean he was suffering from some form of mental illness that might cause him to kill people and rip them apart?
Surely it is not unusual for the whimsical soul to take his own life, but extremely rare for such a soul to take another life?
I believe the body of a retained fireman was found in the Thames around the same time as Druitts?
Retrospectively speaking he could have been Jack the Ripper.

AP, what I said was 'someone with mentals problems' which, clearly, Druitt had as he committed suicide. Ostrog apparently attempted suicide and displayed (possibly feigned) signs of insanity in court and was detained in the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum in early 1888.

Macnaghten, of course, described Druitt as 'sexually insane' and Ostrog as having been 'detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac'. As we are discussing Macnaghten's citing of these other men as 'more likely' suspects than Cutbush then, obviously, whether or not they actually had 'serious mental health issues' is not relevant to the argument. Kosminski, of course, was a lunatic detained in an asylum.

Druitt's name had been linked to the Ripper crimes by Macnaghten's 'private information' and Ostrog had been linked as a result of his release from the asylum before the murders, in March 1888, his being wanted at the time of the murders and his whereabouts unknown. We are merely providing an explanation as to why Macnaghten cited these persons, and these are the reasons.

[Cap'n Jack]

Stewart
did Ostrog and Druitt have serious mental health issues?
Ostrog has always struck me as a determined, cunning and quite daring criminal who knew his onions and appeared to be able to cope with any situation or hardship. I fear the only hard evidence against him being that he was a rotten johnny foreigner.
Druitt on the other hand appeared to have been a whimsical soul, perhaps suffering from repressed feelings of homosexuality, which perhaps drove him to committ suicide... but surely that doesn't mean he was suffering from some form of mental illness that might cause him to kill people and rip them apart?
Surely it is not unusual for the whimsical soul to take his own life, but extremely rare for such a soul to take another life?
I believe the body of a retained fireman was found in the Thames around the same time as Druitts?
Retrospectively speaking he could have been Jack the Ripper.

[Stewart P Evans]

Alternatives

It seems that the Memorandum was a CYA report, in response to what they feared would be an official and public response to the Sun coverage, of Cutbush, as has been stated, but why was it necessary to give alternatives to Cutbush? To give the memorandum more weight? In hindsight, did they see Cutbush, as a serious enough candidate for JtR that they thought they needed to deflect attention from his activities, by nominating the other three characters? It just seems very CYA to me, whether there was or wasn't a cover-up.

I think that the three alternatives were named to show how easy it was to retrospectively nominate someone, especially someone with mental problems, as the Ripper. As we know Macnaghten admitted there was nothing by way of proof against anyone.