A statement of 1913

[Jonathan H]

But that's my point, Tom.

Which record?

The Mac Report official version which contains virtually no errors about Druitt, and yet there he is nothing as a suspect.

Or, the unofficial version in which he is fictionalised, and yet is the best suspect?

Or, Mac's memoirs where he admits that police knowledge about Druitt -- quite correctly -- post-dated his suicide by years.

[celee]

I believe that because the information came to Macnaghten in early 1891, via the 'Old Boy Net' of an Etonian chum who was a Tory MP and a near neighbour of the Druitt family, he had no intention of sharing such information with anybody -- besides Anderson.

Why on Earth would Macnaghten? There was nobody to arrest, and the investigation had been wound down [until briefly with Grainger as a suspect in 1895].

See the breakthrough piece: 'The West of England MP-- Identified' by Andrew Spallek, first published in 'Ripperologist' in 2008, in the Dissertations section.

Hi,

I read Andrew's dissertation.

I thought that Monro's secretary was married to Druitt's cousin. That could have been Mac's connection to the Druitt family and were Mac gained his information that Druitt's family believed him to be Jack the Ripper.

Your friend, Brad

[Jonathan H]

Yes that's possible, Brad.

It is just that we have nothing from the connection you mention that suggests any Ripper revelations at all.

It is far more likely that MP Farquharson is the link as you have in him a fellow officer of state, a near neighbor of the Druitt family, the political connection of the Tory Party, the school connection of Eton with Mac, the similarity of an English Gentile gentleman believing the worst in a fellow gentleman -- just as Mac would do -- and that the date, Feb 11th 1891, matches Mac in his memoirs saying that 'certain facts' about the un-named Druitt only came to police attention 'some years after' the fiend killed himself.

Plus the detail which is wrong, that Druitt killed himself on the night of the last murder, seems to begin here with the MP, and presumably what he has learned about this family's terrible secret -- who in their anguish and shock may have misremembered this detail.

The very fact that Mac is reluctant, ever, to reveal the source of his private info. [eg the MP] makes more sense if he was concerned about the political implications of a Liberal Govt discovering that a [perceived] Tory Toff was the murderer -- let alone what unscrupulous tabloids might do with such a connection.

It's a theory, not a fact, but a lot stronger than the other one.

[Jonathan H]

Destroyed Documents?

A friend of mine, also an Australian History teacher, thinks that the reason that Sir Melville made this statement about 'destroying secrets' or documents, is not because he did so -- his daughter thought not, and Druitt's name survived in the two versions of her father's Report -- but simply as a signal.

A signal to reassure the surviving Druitt family that nothing would be left behind to name them or implicate Montie, patently untrue as it turned out, and a signal to the public that, for the first time, this senior police officer had something big to contribute to a case he had supposedly arrived at 'six months too late'.

That in retirement Macnaghten would admit that he knew -- for certain -- the identity of the fiend: 'that remarkable man'. Sure, other police officers had made the same claim, but he had actually seen some kind of evidence which he had destroyed because the suspect was long dead. Which was probably untrue.

He also, in 1913, claimed that he would never mention what he knew in memoirs, and the following year he did exactly that, though the story is so austere it contains neither 'doctor' nor 'drowned'.