There's Something Wrong with the Swanson Marginalia

[Hunter]

Hi Phil,

Yes, for certain, I agree with your point. That is why I believe the logical answer is that Macnaghten was trying to be very careful in what was presented; thus the Aberconway version being a hastly drawn 'draft' ( as Simon noted in the previous post the Sun articles appeared in short order) and he had little time to offer a response; which - whatever one's take on his reasoning is - had to be measured for some desired effect. The fact that it seemed to never go any farther than Macnaghten's desk is the real mystery here. In the end, someone decided it best not to openly challenge the Sun's allegations; rather, just let the story die a natural death.

I understand Simon's thoughts. It certainly can be perceived as suspicious, but it may have simply been a matter that any public discourse would expose the fact that SY had no conclusive evidence on anyone and as a result, this little 'wakeup call' by the Sun prompted men like Macnaghten and Anderson to 'solidify' their theories on who the culprit was with a more resolute stand that they had, indeed, known who the murderer was.

In other words, the whole sequence with Macnaghten and Anderson appears reactionary on each one of them's part, instead of some planned cohesive effort to hide the 'real truth'.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Hunter,

Thank you for your reply.
I will quote you and reply to this on the "timelining" thread that deals with the memoranda.

best wishes

Phil

[mariab]

Hunter wrote:
The fact that it seemed to never go any farther than Macnaghten's desk is the real mystery here. In the end, someone decided it best not to openly challenge the Sun's allegations; rather, just let the story die a natural death.
I'm sorry, I'm not appropriately informed, but is it absolutely clear that the Macnagthen “memorandum“ didn't go higher than Magnaghten's desk? In an introductory notice in “Official documents“ here on casebook it says: “These {notes by Macnaghten} were sent to Scotland Yard as an official report, and a slightly edited version is available in the Public Record Office.“
I completely agree with Hunter's analysis of this whole sequence with Macnaghten and Anderson as a reaction to the Sun report instead of some planned cohesive effort to cover up the investigation.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Everybody,
Macnaghten"s report dated 23rd February 1894 and labelled simply "Confidential",consisted of seven pages of foolscap and everything in it was tackled with great attention to detail. It was about Thomas Cutbush and his background and "arraignment" and the actual offences which landed him in Broadmoor.He addresses the range of Whitechapel murders from the 1887 Torso murder which he likens to the Elizabeth Jackson Torso murder and first Pinchin Street Torso all these overlapping and more or less concurrent with those five ,and five only that he attributes to JtR.He is at pains to point out that in each of these cases up to the case of Mary Kelly, the fury of the mutilations had increased[his underlining].Then he questions whether the same person who committed the Mary Kelly mutilations would have been content two and a half years later simply "prodding a girl behind"[the implication being that by then he would be foaming at the mouth and ready to cut that same girl into tiny pieces in the street!
So I see the 1894 report as a vindication of his theory---that Druitt [who died by drowning himself soon after] was the killer.That is what Macnaghten believed and his 7 page memorandum spells out why.And it can be seen,in my view, as the "support" for a police theory and only a theory, that either Druitt or a deranged man named Kosminski now in an asylum,committed such a spate of murders.Macnaghten,in my own view was simply speculating.Neither he nor Robert Anderson had any idea whatever who the murderer actually was,IMHO.
Best,
Norma

[Stephen Thomas]

equipoise

What the the bloody hell does that word mean?

[Simon Wood]

It's a ten-bob word meaning balance.

[Stephen Thomas]

It's a ten-bob word meaning balance.

Thank-you, Simon. Much appreciated.

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

Thanks for posting the political quotes, which show that Cutbush was ballooning into potential trouble.

Note that there is already a Liberal/Tory split opening up, as the former were not responsible for the Whitechapel debacle.

Macnaghten moves quickly to create a document which will do several things at once:

For starters, that it was a backbench Tory MP who found the dead fiend is simply to be left unmentioned eg. 'from private information ...'.

We know that Mac thought Druitt was the only viable suspect [from his memoirs, from the other version, from his 1913 comments, from his briefing of Griffiths and Sims] but then why wasn't he arrested?

Because he was long dead ... or because he was a ... Tory barrister??

Either option is a shocker!

God, it just gets worse and worse!

Tiptoeing through a minefield!

Druitt wasn't arrested because the police had never heard of the drowned barrister, for years!

But can we trust the Liberals to accept all that?

Plus, Mac may have promised the Druitts that it would never, ever come out in public.

That the MP slip of 1891 would never happen again.

But this was the Ripper, and not this Cutbush -- not anybody else.

What an acute dilemma??

So, knowing that Druitt's name will not be read out, Mac turns him into a nothing, hearsay suspect ['said to be a doctor, said to be from a good family, said to be upwards of a month in the river... '] but one known before he killed himself.

There was, after all, such a suspect, an American dodgy doctor, but he too will have to cease to exist, subsumed into the drowned barrister.

That is what is falsely and silkily implied.

That there was a 'theory' that the Kelly murder was so grotesque that the killer had to be dead, or in a madhouse.

Actually the police had never had this idea --ever.

That is why they were frantically trying to fit up sailor Sadler in 1891 -- which will also be buried at the end of the Report.

The investigation will apear to have been essentially an 1888 operation, with some minor footnotes afterwards.

The chief witness used by police, Joe Lawende, will have to cease to exist as that was all another debacle: a useless 'no' for Sadler and and a useless 'yes' Grainger.

Now there will be no witnesses, as there wasn't anybody who actually saw him disembowelling a harlot -- a disingenuous distinction!

But it will have to do!

Kosminski replaces Pizer, another debacle, and Ostrog will replace Tumbelty, another debacle; a foreign con man and a handy banged-up psycho.

The foreign swine will help obscure the English gentleman suspect.

For to just have 'Dr. Druitt' gives it away that there was only a single major suspect.

And mentioning Sadler and Pizer and Tumblety is to invite ridicule, and a potential libel action from the affluent Yank.

Or Tumblety, as an Irish swine, can complain to the Irish-Home Rule loving Liberals that he is being persecuted all over again -- by Tory cops!

So, minor suspects are thrown in to make it look as if there was a list and here a few nothing suspects -- but better than Cutbush!

Whom he makes the nephew of a retired cop to get the Liberals onside exploiting their obsession with rights and social justice for the workers, because what really lies behind this other cop talking to the Sun is spite, plain old character-assassination spite!

Nice-guy Asquith was a sucker for such stories, and loathed the tabloids.

To cover himself, to leave himself wiggle room, in case the Druitt business explodes anyway, Mac provides 'proof's shadow': the family 'believed' that M J was the fiend, and he was 'sexually insane'.

That contradictory line sticks out like a sore thumb, but it will have to do!

That Macnaghten is dissembling is obvious if you compare what he writes here to the primary sources and to his own memoirs, and the other versions of the same Report.

The idea that he wrote two versions of this Report in a few days, because he was so silly, so obtuse, as to announce that [a Tory] 'doctor' was almost certainly the fiend does not fly with me -- for what that is worth.

That he swaps places with the Druitt family, between versions, as to who was certain about Montie's guilt??

The old idea that the only difference between the two versions is just the removal of personal opinion, is very weak -- both versions are clearly personal opinion, Mac's opinion, carefully shaped and reshaped for their intended audiences.

This official version, which was unknown to anybody but Macnaghten is, in effect, the 'draft'.

The Aberconway version is the official version, though actually not a copy of a definitive 'Home Office Report', as Mac would falsely claim to his literary cronies who were to disseminate it to the public, and it represents his real thinking -- up to a point.

This 'unofficial' version still hustles the writers on the idea that 'Dr Druitt' was known to police before he killed himself, and that Sadler -- who now really did kill Coles! -- is just a tabloid-driven sideshow.

In his memoirs Mac admits that the investigation went from Smith to Coles, with the police none-the-wiser that the real killer died early, 'soon after' the Kelly murder in fact. He does not mention, in those same memoirs, that he contributed any kind of official assessment.

This is despite the memoir chapter clearly being written with the Aberconway version at his very elbow -- he claims in the chapter it is memory alone, having said, falsely, in 1913 that he had destroyed any record with the fiend's identity -- and is actually the 'third' version of his original Report, now much more honest.

How do we know it is more honest -- from such an unreliable source?

Because it matches the primary sources on Druitt, and on the events of 1891.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

I admire your fortitude, but I'm sorry to report that even with a Babel fish stuck in my ear I still couldn't make complete sense of your post.

So in the first instance allow me to ask you a question.

Are you one of the favoured few who has actually clapped eyes on the full Aberconway version?

Regards,

Simon

[Natalie Severn]

Jonathan, have you ever seen a copy of the handwritten seven page official Macnaghten report ? Reading it without a conspiracy theory in mind actually makes good sense.You dont have to agree with him but given it was 1894 its not bad.Macnaghten had been a tea planter ---[or an indigo planter],not exactly a Sherlock Holmes.He was just doing his best to understand what sort of a killer they were dealing with ! He was probably concerned about the effect of the news articles on Charles Cutbush too, who,by 1894 ,was clearly not very well in the head and did in fact shoot himself not long after that,so maybe,just maybe,he was worried on his account too,that it might tip him over the edge.He may not have been clear of exactly what the relationship was,if any, of Thomas Cutbush to Charles Cutbush ---but he may well have been acting in good faith.

[Tecs]

Maria,

Thank you. At some point I will subscribe to all of the publications.

What in particular does this edition say about Anderson?

Regards

[Jonathan H]

Natalie,

Yes I have.

Have you ever read Mac's memoirs?

Or at least: 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper'

It provides [a provisional] solution to the whole, eh ... 'mystery'.

By the way, I am not and have never claimed a 'conspiracy'.

One person's discretion regarding a document that nobody saw -- is hardly a plot?!

The Mac Report, official version, may have been pulled by Mac himself because he could not 'cut the knot' to his satisfaction.

I agree that Mac was not Sherlock on the Ripper.

In the sense that the whole thing was handed to him, on a silver platter, via a leak to the press in 1891.

He probably wrapped up the entire mystery in an afternoon at the Garrick Club with Henry Farquharson and William Druitt -- without breaking a sweat.

To the credulous George Sims he later cheekily characterised this clubby inquiry as an 'exhaustive inquiry' by a team of Super-cops, closing fast upon the 'demented doctor' to arrest him -- a team of which he was not a member as he was not there in 1888.

It's all such school boy fun: a 'shilling shocker' for Joe Public.

But he fessed up in the memoirs.

Not that you know it from this site and the other one.

Macnaghten plays you lot of veteran Ripperologists for suckers.

Every time ...

To Simon

I am sorry, that's my fault if you cannot follow it.

I was trying to write that Mac was anxious to conceal that the
Ripper was known, in Druitt, that he was from a Tory family, that he was stumbled upon not by cops but by a Tory MP 'some years after'.

He wanted to give the impression, instead, that Druitt was a minor suspect known to police at the time of his death -- but still better than Cutbush? Neither of those twin claims, as we can from other sources, are what he really thought.

No I am not privy to the Full Aberconway!

I wish I could see it, especially as I alone understand Macnaghten, the Honourable Schoolboy, and can milk the most out of it.

Why it is not available -- even as a copy -- is truly bizarre?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

Many thanks.

Why is the full Aberconway version not available?

That is the $64,000 question.

We're being given the runaround.

Regards,

Simon

[Phil Carter]

Hi Jonathan,

Many thanks.

Why is the full Aberconway version not available?

That is the $64,000 question.

We're being given the runaround.

Regards,

Simon

Hello Simon,

Seemingly so. Especially as she is quoted in conversation with and by Don Rumbelow the following:-

" My elder sister, ten years older than myself, took all the papers when my mother died- which is why Gerald has them: I have never seen them. But in my father's book "Days of my Years" he talks of "Jack the Ripper"... that is all the information I can give." (my emphasis in bold)

I referred to this on the timelining thread earlier today, which is specifically to do with the Memorandae.

best wishes

Phil

[The Grave Maurice]

...which is specifically to do with the Memorandae.

Phil, Phil, surely the plural of memorandum is memoranda and, as I read somewhere recently, errare humanum est et confiteri errorem prudentis.