There's Something Wrong with the Swanson Marginalia

[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

[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

[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?

[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

[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.