hot potato

[martin wilson]

Perhaps it concerned Home Secretary Henry Matthews.
Warren had been urging Matthews to offer a pardon to any accomplice of the murderer who would betray him to the police.
On the 17th October Warren wrote to Charles Murdoch principle clerk of the Home Office with reference to a letter he considered a hoax,however he also wrote;
'But a communication has come in from another source which looks more genuine.We have not tested it yet.
The offer of a pardon was not issued until November 10th.
Perhaps if the offer of a pardon had been issued earlier, more information would have come from this source,whatever it was.
But by November 10th of course Mary Kelly had been cut to pieces.
Monroe may have known about this source, but any mention of it would have greatly embarassed Matthews at the time,and was indeed a 'hot potato'
Factual sources from Mr Sugden, speculation from the demented mind of Mr Wilson.
All the best.

[Barnaby]

I agree that Kelly is an excellent suspect but I wonder why the police didn't put even more effort into locating him? It seems like they knocked on a few doors and that was that. Even if he wasn't suspected of being the Ripper, one would think that his status as a wife-killer escapee from Broadmoor would have been enough to attract public/police attention.

[Roy Corduroy]

Mike Covell said he read that book and said it has no index, bibliography, or acknowledgements. I suppose that rules out it having footnotes.

In my opinion, James Monro's hot potato was the state secret that James Kelly had escaped Broadmoor in January 1888 and was on the loose during the Whitechapel murders. In fact Monro inquired about him that spring. And after the Mary Kelly murder, detectives went looking for him at Mrs. Brider's house on City Road. He was a police suspect when the trail was hot. But they never located him. And they never breathed a word of this.

James Kelly had murdered his wife in 1883 in London by stabbing her in the throat with a knife and was mentally unstable. Was escaped from the Home Office flagship prison/mental ward. Surely this is the hot potato. The one thing the authorities dreaded the public knowing. Which they never did.

No one dined out on this story.

Roy

[Tom_Wescott]

LOL. It's like the one Ripper book I don't own (not literally, but close!).

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Supe]

Thanks for clearing that up, Simon, and Moonbegger can you please include a source for your quotes?

Don.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

According to the Wikipedia entry for James Monro, Moonbeggar's quote is from Colin Kendell, "Jack the Ripper: The Theories and the Facts", Amberley, 2010.

Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

Wow, interesting. Moonbeggar is either pulling our leg or he's quoting from another sources I'm completely unaware of. Spiro's book (JTR & Black Magic) is the only book thus far to give any discussion to Monro and his 'hot potato', but none of this appears in Spiro's book. However, he does talk about Monro's descendants discussing two different memoirs from James Monroe - one being the familiar one that Keith Skinner has, that mentions little of value, and a 2nd with all the behind the scenes stuff, secrets, and his theory on the Ripper. The whereabouts of this second volume are unknown, but presumably still in the family, if it ever existed at all (and I, for one, have serious doubt that it did).

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. Ironically, I'm literally eating hot potatoes as I type this.

[Phil H]

Hello MB. Do you have a source for that?

Same question for me.

I believe that a misunderstanding of Victorian idiom (different to ours) with its allusions and metaphor, maybe at the root of this.

I seem to recall that a comment by magnaten (?) to the effect that JtR knocked out a Chief commissioner and settled the hash of a Home Secretary, as literally interpreted by one writer, who envisaged a fight in an office, involving a suspect (White-eyed man?) and Warren and Matthews.

The remark related, of course, to the fact that Warren resigned during the Ripper period (his position partially undermined by a failure to capture the Whitechapel murderer) and Matthews was embarrassed politically by the affir.

Could the "hot potato" remark have been similarly misunderstood?

Phil H

[lynn cates]

source

Hello MB. Do you have a source for that?

Cheers.
LC

[RavenDarkendale]

In the original game of 'hot potato', obviously the idea is that you pass the potato on before you get burned by it. Warren held on to it for too long, and it burned him.

I therefore think the term simply describes a 'case' that one would not want to have placed in one's lap. I don't think there's any 'conspiracy' or 'secret information' here.

Regards
Timsta

And since Warren was forced to resign, this dumped the Ripper case, all of the unsolved Whitechapel murders squarely on Munro who probably didn't appreciate the favor! Hot potato indeed! I know I would have been scrambling for any sort of answer that would get the bloody mess off my back!

[moonbegger]

Was this the Hot potato ?

In 1995 Monro's grandson, Christopher Monro, disclosed that Monro had been convinced that Montague Druitt had been Jack the Ripper but was prevented from saying so. William Druitt, brother of Montague, had threatened that if his brother was named, he would reveal that there were homosexuals in high positions in Parliament, the Bar, the Army and the Church. Christopher Monro was told this by his father Douglas Monro, who had examined Monro's papers after his death.[

cheers

moonbegger

[Jonathan H]

If Monro really told his son that the Ripper case was a 'hot potato' then it could be because of Druitt?

In the sense that Monro, Macnaghten's patron, was referring to Scotland Yard not knowing about Druitt as the chief Ripper suspect until 'some years after' he killed himself?

If anybody recalled the Sadler debacle they would see that the police - or as the tabloids would unfairly portray it -- were vainly trying to railroad an innocent man.

Monro's cunning protege arguably took care of this hot potato, by creating the canonical five, de-emphasizing Coles and Sadler from the tale, and making Druitt libel-proof to the Home Office [run by the Liberals in 1894] and to the public [The Drowned Doctor 1898 to 1914].

[Johnr]

Littlechild Liked BAKED POTATOES

I have been reading some recollections by Littlechild of his shadowing suspects to their houses and standing outside all night. What with the drizzle and the cold, he said he was glad to finish work and get a Roast Potato!!

Given that Monro would have known Littlechild......You don't suppose Monro liked them too? Do you?

[lynn cates]

food for thought

Hello John. Good post. Your speculation really makes the gravy thick, eh?

The best.
LC

[Johnr]

The Return Of Monro To Be Marked By Capture Of Hot potato

So, could it be that the newspaper columnist who prophesized that Monro's return to the Commissionership, in late 1888, would be garnished by the capture of the Hot potato, was not referring to Cold Toast boring Druitt but....James Kelly?? JOHN RUFFELS.