"5 victims and 5 victims only"

[Scott Nelson]

Hatchett, I don't have the link available, but check out the Reynolds Newspaper, May 15, 1921 on Macnaghten's obit. There is a story there almost exactly as you describe above.

[Hatchett]

Hi,

Is there? Thank you. I will check it out.

Best wishes.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Hatchett

Couldn't agree more

Hi Trevor

Coudn't agree less

All the best

Dave

[pinkmoon]

I think the most interesting thing about the memo is the fact sir Melville states that Druitts family not the police think he is the ripper.Why would such a well educated family like druitts think this most people wouldn't even want to think this about a family member.

[c.d.]

Hello Pinkmoon,

Macnaghten doesn't state that he got the information directly from Druitt's family. It might have been passed along by a third party. If so, did they misconstrue what was said to them by a member of the Druitt family? As for the family itself, I would think that it relates primarily to Druitt's mental state and who knows what else. You are right though that it is very strange for a family to have such convictions about one of their own.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Now that I think about it, I have to wonder if Druitt's death was ever investigated as possibly being foul play as opposed to a suicide. If so, it is reasonable to assume that they questioned the family. Could the police somehow have passed along their suspicions that the Ripper might have committed suicide as well as the erroneous belief that Druitt was a doctor and that a doctor was behind the Ripper killings?

c.d.

[pinkmoon]

Now that I think about it, I have to wonder if Druitt's death was ever investigated as possibly being foul play as opposed to a suicide. If so, it is reasonable to assume that they questioned the family. Could the police somehow have passed along their suspicions that the Ripper might have committed suicide as well as the erroneous belief that Druitt was a doctor and that a doctor was behind the Ripper killings?

c.d.

I always thought it was a bit strange that his brother was very willing to tell the inquest about the mother's mental state which would have been very embarrasing to say the least.He also had no problem telling that Monty had got into serious trouble at work it is though he was trying to give some very good reason why he topped himself.

[Wickerman]

Now that I think about it, I have to wonder if Druitt's death was ever investigated as possibly being foul play as opposed to a suicide. If so, it is reasonable to assume that they questioned the family. Could the police somehow have passed along their suspicions that the Ripper might have committed suicide as well as the erroneous belief that Druitt was a doctor and that a doctor was behind the Ripper killings?

c.d.

We might also notice that this suggestion of Druitt's family suspecting him does not say 'while he was alive'. Someone in the family may have questioned the coincidence of his death and the end of the murders (with Kelly), and began to speculate.
It was 6-7 months before another (McKenzie) fell victim to someone.
The suggestion is all too vague.

[c.d.]

Yes, good point, Jon.

c.d.

[Jonathan H]

Foundational Inaccuracies?

So-called 'Ripperology' is built on a series of interlocking assumptions that are treated as facts. Arguably these assumptions are wrong.

This thread has repeated many of them, but I will just focus on three.

Macnaghten did not personally investigate the Ripper case because he arrived after it was over.

The Whitechapel murders lasted between 1888 and 1891. Melville Macnaghten began working at C.I.D. as Assistant Chief Constable in mid-1889. There was no sense that 'Jack' was dead. I think those police who suspected Dr. Tumblety saw in the July 1889 Alice McKenzie murder the American quack's potential exoneration (although not apparently Jack Littlechild, at least by 1913)

Posters are unaware that the much briefer 'autumn of terror' is Macnaghten's opinion based on posthumously learning about the Dorset [alleged] solution. Until 1898 the final 'Jack' murder, as promulgated by some police and by most of the press was that of Frances Coles on Feb 13th 1891.

Montague Druitt did not die just after the murders stopped. Instead he died prematurely, eg, two years too early; before two to four subsequent 'Jack murders. This fact alone should have exonerated him among his family (who "believed") and Macnaghten, if the evidence against the deceased barrister was merely superficial and ambiguous.

Furthermore, since the Dorset/"son of a surgeon" solution did not leak until Feb 1891, Macnaghten was very much there to investigate this suspect.

Moreover, we find from his 1914 memoirs that this upper class administrator frequently fled his desk to be a roving sleuth, sometimes quite alone, to excitedly inquire into the most sensational cases (and this particular line of inquiry involved a long deceased, fellow gent which threatened to become yet another publicity debacle for the Yard hot on the heels of the exoneration of Tom Sadler).

2. Macnaghten knew less than Anderson and/or Swanson about 'Kosminski'.

In his marginalia Donald Swanson either believed or repeated the belief of Anderson that 'Kosminski' was deceased soon after being sectioned (in his autobiography of his parents, the Anderson son claims that the foreign lunatic was sectioned and then died, presumably repeating his father's belief).

Whereas Macnaghten knew that 'Kosminski' was not deceased, and knew this as late as 1898 (the 'Aberconway Papers') and 1907 (George Sims in 'Lloyds Weekly').

Macnaghten knew about the chronic masturbation, that the Pole lived very close to the five murders that Macnaghten consdiered to be by the same kilelr, and that he had shown homicidal tendencies (eg. threatening a female relative with a knife).

True he backdates his incarceration to March 1889, but it is a deliberate backdating as the real person was only permanently incarcerated when Macnaghten had been on the Force for nearly two years. It happened while he was there.

3. the Macnaghten memorandum was an internal document not for the press.

In fact Macnaghten wrote two quite different versions of a report, the first official version composed on his own initiative for the Home Secretary (albeit neither is addressed to anybody).

Whereas the suspects section of the version he called a "memorandum" was disseminated to the public via Major Arthur Griffiths (1898) and George R. Sims (1899, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1911, 1915, 1917).

Arguably this version was created to be the springboard of a public relations campaign to persuade the public that the drowned "mad doctor" as 'Jack' was the definitive opinion of the highest authorities at Scotland Yard and the Home Office. And that detectives were about to arrest this strongest of all police suspects, but they missed him by a whisker (not to worry, he went to a watery grave, virtually unable to function after the horror of Miller's Court).

There were people who saw through this propaganda right from the start, one being the best selling alarmist William Le Queux, in 1899, who wrote to the effect that the drowned suspect was an excuse backdated to restore public faith in the police.

Sir Melville Macnaghten either had an extraordinary memory (all the primary sources are unanimous in asserting the police chief had extraordinary powers of recall) or he kept a private scrapbook about M. J. Druitt. For example, we see that in Major Griffiths adapting the salient section of 'Aberconway' the Druitt family were altered--eg. discreetly hidden--to become 'friends' while Montie, only 31, had become middle-aged (and a surgeon). Both of these details are in the very first local newspaper report on the recovery of the barrister's body at Chiswick; the corpse is described as being about forty and that friends of the deceased have been contacted at Bournemouth (actually it was his older brother by one year, William Harvey Druitt, a solicitor).

[GUT]

G'day Jonathan

Good to see you back.

[Wickerman]

I'll second that, nice to see you Jonathan.

[Jonathan H]

Thanks fellas.

My book, long promised (or threatened?) and never delivered, is finally finished and will be published in the USA in the next few months.

It will be the best effort I can make of the 'case disguised' revisionist theory, but it will be up to readers/critics to decide how persuasive it is--or not.

The theory is, arguably, backed and strengthened my new sources found by other researchers (such as Chris Philips and Jan Bondeson, neither of whom I hasten to add support my take on the Ripper subject) and a few previously unknown sources on Macnaghten found by myself--and a similarly unknown one by George Sims that was found by my partner and research assistant that is quite a doozy!

[GUT]

Thanks fellas.

My book, long promised (or threatened?) and never delivered, is finally finished and will be published in the USA in the next few months.

It will be the best effort I can make of the 'case disguised' revisionist theory, but it will be up to readers/critics to decide how persuasive it is--or not.

The theory is, arguably, backed and strengthened my new sources found by other researchers (such as Chris Philips and Jan Bondeson, neither of whom I hasten to add support my take on the Ripper subject) and a few previously unknown sources on Macnaghten found by myself--and a similarly unknown one by George Sims that was found by my partner and research assistant that is quite a doozy!

Congratulations, please make sure it is released in Aus.