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I have been asked to move this material to the appropriate thread.
It outlines a number of examples of Sir Melville Macnaghten being a sly player of a game regarding Druitt's identity.
That this was forced upon him by circumstances, as the fiend was long dead, and yet his identity had nearly leaked once in Dorset and could so again.
Hence Mac's bobbing and weaving over twenty years, to make the Yard look super-efficient about the alleged hunt for the 'Drowned Doctor' (this is Jack Littlechild's real message to Sims in 1913; you are being played for a sucker, sir!)
The conventional wisdom argues that this is all wrong.
That Mac was simply mistaken as he worked from a poor memory. That he seems to have known almost nothing about the real Druitt.
No 'bobbing' and 'weaving' at all?
Yet this notion of Mac's faulty memory comes ... from Mac?! From this smoothie's memoir's preface (in which he cheekily juxtaposes Jack the Ripper with championship cricket) as his excuse for any errors -- His Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.
All other contemporaneous sources describe Mac's memory as extraordinary, and extraordinarily accurate.
Plus, you hardly need a marvelous memory to recall such basic details about your preferred Ripper suspect, such as his having been a barrister rather than a doctor.
Mac, the 'honourable schoolboy' prankster and overgrown Old Etonian, is being deceitful -- as usual.
Here are ten examples:
1. He claims in 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' (1914) to be writing entirely from memory.
In fact, it is obvious he is adapting 'Aberconway' right in front of him.
Furthermore, he dumps Druitt as a 'Tumbletyesque' middle-aged doctor being hunted by police in 1888, and completely dumps the camouflage suspects, 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog, whom he had created (I think Druitt's hapless sidekicks were nothing more than self-amused japes by the Old Etonian; the former because he masturbated like there was no tomorrow, and the latter because he dared to defile Eton with his thievery)
2. In 1913 Mac claimed to the press, and an aghast H. L. Adam, that he had destroyed all documents pertaining to the un-named Druitt.
But not only was Druitt's name still on file, Mac had not even burnt his own personal copy of the same document which he had been flashing around to cronies for years (I think he said this lie to reassure the surviving Druitts). Even his daughter conceded in 1959 that her father was harmlessly fibbing.
3. Mac misled Sims into believing that Griffiths had seen a definitive Home Office Report, seen by the Home Sec. Neither claim was true. This was so Sims could swat away Abberline's off-hand rejection of the 'Drowned Doctor'.
4. Both versions of his slippery report give the impression that Druitt was being hunted before he killed himself, or came to police attention very soon after. This was how Major Griffiths and George Sims understood it and disseminated the tale to the public.
Primary sources show this to be impossible, and Macnaghten himself came clean that it was not true in his memoirs.
5. From 1902 Sims began writing of the clincher detail against the 'Drowned Doctor' now revealed to have not practiced as a surgeon for many years. That he had been incarcerated in an asylum, 'twice', after being diagnosed as a homicidal harlot hater. That it was the state's fault for letting him out.
In his memoirs Macnaghten again conceded what we know from primary sources -- Druitt had never been institutionalized (but may have feared going like mother; eg. ending up in a madhouse for what he had done).
6. After a woman, Elizabeth Camp, was murdered on a train in 1897, somebody at Scotland Yard told a reporter that her likely killer immediately drowned himself in the Thames.
Sound familiar?
It is like a dry-run for the Griffiths' revelation about the Ripper as 'Drowned Doctor' the following year.
7. From 1903, Sims began writing that the doctor's body bobbed up within, or even less than a month after the Kelly murder.
Yet in 'Aberconway' and the official version, Mac wrote that the date was the 31st of December. Of course the new Sims' version is more satisfying, and removes the three weeks that Druitt was alive. It makes the barrister's true identity even more unrecoverable. It is also cognition on Mac's part that the timeline needed crunching for public consumption.
8. Griffiths and/or Mac changed the Druitt family of 'Aberconway' into 'friends' presumably to make the tale even more libel-proof.
Sims never claimed to see the 'Home Office Report'. He just adds the detail about the frantic friends trying to find the missing, unemployed doctor.
Therefore, Sims was misled by Mac, as this was actually the fiend's brother.
9. Research by the brilliant and meticulous Debra Arif shows that Cutbush and Cutbush are probably not uncle and nephew -- not related at all!?
Therefore Macnaghten is either Constable Magoo, or a deft Whitehall player.
That he is preparing a scurrilous -- and spurious -- motive for Inspector Race to the Liberal Home Sec.
eg. That the un-named Race's 'outing' of the un-named Thomas Cutbush to 'The Sun', is motivated by nothing more than malice; that he feels such 'sour grapes' towards a retired colleague, one who does, tragically, have a lunatic relative -- who non-fatally 'jobbed' a few women -- that he has tried to manufacture a police cover-up of Jack the Ripper, the bloody swine!
In fact, it is all made-up by Macnaghten (and never actually sent to that Dept. of State).
10. 'Said to be a doctor ...' literally means that from information received this minor suspect might have been a physician, or might not. He might have been from a 'good family', or he might not. He might have disappeared right after the Kelly murder, or he might not. He might have been 'upwards of a month' a rotting corpse in the Thames, or he might not.
eg. We never checked because he was so minor a suspect, yet -- and here's the circle Mac is awkwardly trying to square -- his own family definitely 'believed' in his guilt, not might have believed. And he was, not might have been, 'sexually insane'; that he took erotic pleasure from violence against women, specifically whores.
Might have been a doctor, but then again he might not have been -- and guess what, he wasn't.
Mac is not 'wrong' in that document about Druitt, though I do not think anybody 'said' to him that the suspect was a physician either.
It's another excuse, a bureaucratic dodge, prepared in case the whole 'son of a surgeon' story comes spilling out of Dorset (as it nearly did in 1891) and a Liberal govt. looks askance at Tory police chiefs about a dead Ripper who turns out to come from a Tory family, and who was first stumbled upon by a loose-lipped Tory backbencher.
And who, embarrassingly (though not to Mac personally) was never on police radar.
It outlines a number of examples of Sir Melville Macnaghten being a sly player of a game regarding Druitt's identity.
That this was forced upon him by circumstances, as the fiend was long dead, and yet his identity had nearly leaked once in Dorset and could so again.
Hence Mac's bobbing and weaving over twenty years, to make the Yard look super-efficient about the alleged hunt for the 'Drowned Doctor' (this is Jack Littlechild's real message to Sims in 1913; you are being played for a sucker, sir!)
The conventional wisdom argues that this is all wrong.
That Mac was simply mistaken as he worked from a poor memory. That he seems to have known almost nothing about the real Druitt.
No 'bobbing' and 'weaving' at all?
Yet this notion of Mac's faulty memory comes ... from Mac?! From this smoothie's memoir's preface (in which he cheekily juxtaposes Jack the Ripper with championship cricket) as his excuse for any errors -- His Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.
All other contemporaneous sources describe Mac's memory as extraordinary, and extraordinarily accurate.
Plus, you hardly need a marvelous memory to recall such basic details about your preferred Ripper suspect, such as his having been a barrister rather than a doctor.
Mac, the 'honourable schoolboy' prankster and overgrown Old Etonian, is being deceitful -- as usual.
Here are ten examples:
1. He claims in 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' (1914) to be writing entirely from memory.
In fact, it is obvious he is adapting 'Aberconway' right in front of him.
Furthermore, he dumps Druitt as a 'Tumbletyesque' middle-aged doctor being hunted by police in 1888, and completely dumps the camouflage suspects, 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog, whom he had created (I think Druitt's hapless sidekicks were nothing more than self-amused japes by the Old Etonian; the former because he masturbated like there was no tomorrow, and the latter because he dared to defile Eton with his thievery)
2. In 1913 Mac claimed to the press, and an aghast H. L. Adam, that he had destroyed all documents pertaining to the un-named Druitt.
But not only was Druitt's name still on file, Mac had not even burnt his own personal copy of the same document which he had been flashing around to cronies for years (I think he said this lie to reassure the surviving Druitts). Even his daughter conceded in 1959 that her father was harmlessly fibbing.
3. Mac misled Sims into believing that Griffiths had seen a definitive Home Office Report, seen by the Home Sec. Neither claim was true. This was so Sims could swat away Abberline's off-hand rejection of the 'Drowned Doctor'.
4. Both versions of his slippery report give the impression that Druitt was being hunted before he killed himself, or came to police attention very soon after. This was how Major Griffiths and George Sims understood it and disseminated the tale to the public.
Primary sources show this to be impossible, and Macnaghten himself came clean that it was not true in his memoirs.
5. From 1902 Sims began writing of the clincher detail against the 'Drowned Doctor' now revealed to have not practiced as a surgeon for many years. That he had been incarcerated in an asylum, 'twice', after being diagnosed as a homicidal harlot hater. That it was the state's fault for letting him out.
In his memoirs Macnaghten again conceded what we know from primary sources -- Druitt had never been institutionalized (but may have feared going like mother; eg. ending up in a madhouse for what he had done).
6. After a woman, Elizabeth Camp, was murdered on a train in 1897, somebody at Scotland Yard told a reporter that her likely killer immediately drowned himself in the Thames.
Sound familiar?
It is like a dry-run for the Griffiths' revelation about the Ripper as 'Drowned Doctor' the following year.
7. From 1903, Sims began writing that the doctor's body bobbed up within, or even less than a month after the Kelly murder.
Yet in 'Aberconway' and the official version, Mac wrote that the date was the 31st of December. Of course the new Sims' version is more satisfying, and removes the three weeks that Druitt was alive. It makes the barrister's true identity even more unrecoverable. It is also cognition on Mac's part that the timeline needed crunching for public consumption.
8. Griffiths and/or Mac changed the Druitt family of 'Aberconway' into 'friends' presumably to make the tale even more libel-proof.
Sims never claimed to see the 'Home Office Report'. He just adds the detail about the frantic friends trying to find the missing, unemployed doctor.
Therefore, Sims was misled by Mac, as this was actually the fiend's brother.
9. Research by the brilliant and meticulous Debra Arif shows that Cutbush and Cutbush are probably not uncle and nephew -- not related at all!?
Therefore Macnaghten is either Constable Magoo, or a deft Whitehall player.
That he is preparing a scurrilous -- and spurious -- motive for Inspector Race to the Liberal Home Sec.
eg. That the un-named Race's 'outing' of the un-named Thomas Cutbush to 'The Sun', is motivated by nothing more than malice; that he feels such 'sour grapes' towards a retired colleague, one who does, tragically, have a lunatic relative -- who non-fatally 'jobbed' a few women -- that he has tried to manufacture a police cover-up of Jack the Ripper, the bloody swine!
In fact, it is all made-up by Macnaghten (and never actually sent to that Dept. of State).
10. 'Said to be a doctor ...' literally means that from information received this minor suspect might have been a physician, or might not. He might have been from a 'good family', or he might not. He might have disappeared right after the Kelly murder, or he might not. He might have been 'upwards of a month' a rotting corpse in the Thames, or he might not.
eg. We never checked because he was so minor a suspect, yet -- and here's the circle Mac is awkwardly trying to square -- his own family definitely 'believed' in his guilt, not might have believed. And he was, not might have been, 'sexually insane'; that he took erotic pleasure from violence against women, specifically whores.
Might have been a doctor, but then again he might not have been -- and guess what, he wasn't.
Mac is not 'wrong' in that document about Druitt, though I do not think anybody 'said' to him that the suspect was a physician either.
It's another excuse, a bureaucratic dodge, prepared in case the whole 'son of a surgeon' story comes spilling out of Dorset (as it nearly did in 1891) and a Liberal govt. looks askance at Tory police chiefs about a dead Ripper who turns out to come from a Tory family, and who was first stumbled upon by a loose-lipped Tory backbencher.
And who, embarrassingly (though not to Mac personally) was never on police radar.
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