Why Wasn't Druitt Thanked?

[Jonathan H]

And ...

No worries, Mr B.

On a related sub-issue, one I've argued about since 2008. This concerns the line [allegedly] left by the deceased Druitt and read out, or summarized by the coroner at the inquest:

"Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing was for me to die."

For decades it was interpreted by various secondary sources, researchers and Whitechapel buffs to mean that a tormented Druitt feared he was going insane like his mother and decided to kill himself instead.

Sure, it might mean that, based on the premise that he was not "Jack the Ripper", which he might not have been

As with the date of Druitt's dismissal this interpretation might be right (or might be wrong) but, long ago, it hardened into an accepted fact, and thus no other interpretations were possible (or, frankly, welcome).

On the other hand, if Druitt was the Ripper then the line more likely meant that he feared he was going to be sectioned like his mother, though in his case for being a homicidal maniac, and he preferred death to disgrace and intolerable confinement in an asylum.

For years this revisionist interpretation was universally and flatly rejected because Montague Druitt could not have been, or, was extremely unlikely to have been the Ripper.

Confirmation that mine is a legitimate alternate way to interpret the source arrived in 2013 with the discovery of the extraordinary "The True History of Jack the Ripper" by Guy Logan, written in 1905. This tabloid hack was known to George Sims, who in turn knew the truth about Druitt from police chief and close friend, Melville Macnaghten. Logan's open mix of fact and fiction -- although readers deliberately would not know which was which -- has the Druitt/Ripper figure (Mortemer Slade) say, to himself, that he would rather kill himself than end his days in a madhouse for his maniacal atrocities.

There is other accurate data about Druitt in Logan that I think comes from Macnaghten via Sims. This includes Mortemer Slade being an Oxonian, an athlete, has a family history of suicide, is a childless bachelor, leaves false word he is going abroad and does not drown himself instantly after eviscerating Mary Kelly. Slade is also the fair-mustached man seen by Lawende with Eddowes and even MP Henry Farquharson, with a different name of course, arguably makes a walk-on appearance.

[Mayerling]

No worries, Mr B.

On a related sub-issue, one I've argued about since 2008. This concerns the line [allegedly] left by the deceased Druitt and read out, or summarized by the coroner at the inquest:

"Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing was for me to die."

For decades it was interpreted by various secondary sources, researchers and Whitechapel buffs to mean that a tormented Druitt feared he was going insane like his mother and decided to kill himself instead.

Sure, it might mean that, based on the premise that he was not "Jack the Ripper", which he might not have been

As with the date of Druitt's dismissal this interpretation might be right (or might be wrong) but, long ago, it hardened into an accepted fact, and thus no other interpretations were possible (or, frankly, welcome).

On the other hand, if Druitt was the Ripper then the line more likely meant that he feared he was going to be sectioned like his mother, though in his case for being a homicidal maniac, and he preferred death to disgrace and intolerable confinement in an asylum.

For years this revisionist interpretation was universally and flatly rejected because Montague Druitt could not have been, or, was extremely unlikely to have been the Ripper.

Confirmation that mine is a legitimate alternate way to interpret the source arrived in 2013 with the discovery of the extraordinary "The True History of Jack the Ripper" by Guy Logan, written in 1905. This tabloid hack was known to George Sims, who in turn knew the truth about Druitt from police chief and close friend, Melville Macnaghten. Logan's open mix of fact and fiction -- although readers deliberately would not know which was which -- has the Druitt/Ripper figure (Mortemer Slade) say, to himself, that he would rather kill himself than end his days in a madhouse for his maniacal atrocities.

There is other accurate data about Druitt in Logan that I think comes from Macnaghten via Sims. This includes Mortemer Slade being an Oxonian, an athlete, has a family history of suicide, is a childless bachelor, leaves false word he is going abroad and does not drown himself instantly after eviscerating Mary Kelly. Slade is also the fair-mustached man seen by Lawende with Eddowes and even MP Henry Farquharson, with a different name of course, arguably makes a walk-on appearance.

Hi Jonathan,

I'm not sure about this, as I am basing it on the 1943 Laird Cregar movie, and not her two versions of the story, but Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes (I believe) gave as the name of her "Lodger" "Slade". It could be (if I am right about her giving the character that name) just a coincidence. Her husband was in the newspaper business. Is it possible that they heard the same version of the "Mortimer Slade" story that Logan gave in that retelling of the Whitechapel Murders? Maybe from Logan or Sims?

He may appear to be a hack newspaperman, but I have several of his collections of criminal tales, and he is an interesting writer when he wants to be - though in one retelling of the Rainhill Murders of Frederick Deeming he gave the year of the discovery of Maria Deeming (and their children's) remains at Rainhill as 1893, one year later than it was.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Druitt and Macnaghten are in "The Lodger"

To Jeff

Hard to say, maybe.

In Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes' best seller "The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog" (1911) the Ripper-figure (who calls himself "The Avenger" via a bloody card) is named Mr Sleuth.

On the other hand, in terms of pop culture the [second] Hitchcock adaptation of this classic, in 1943, is the last gasp of the Drowned Doctor solution (albeit the Ripper figure is not a doctor, but then neither was Druitt): police are fast closing on the fiend and he drowns himself to avoid earthly justice. This is very close to what Sims implied between 1899 and 1897, and what Logan in 1905 turned into a tabloid melodramatic climax for his serial (and partly pinched from Conan Doyle).

From that moment on the notion of the Ripper as a suicide faded completely but the medical man persisted. Sixteen years later, when Lady Aberconway showed Dan Farson her father's "notes" about the Whitechapel crimes which including the bits about Dr. Druitt, it was a long term letdown. The likely Ripper had turned out, disappointingly, to be a lawyer when the important element was that he had killed himself -- but but this did not match what had become entrenched in mass culture, e.g. Jack the Surgeon.

I and my researcher C. Ward-Agius also discovered several intersections in "The Lodger" of 1911 with the Druitt solution, ones that had been previously overlooked.

For example, George Sims, though not named, makes a brief appearance in the story (even his hair restorer is mentioned). Macnaghten, under a false name and upped to Commissioner, also appears and nearly catches the killer -- whom he knows about from having previously had the maniac sectioned -- in one of Mac's favorite places as a boy: Madame Tussauds. It is seeing the Mac figure that helps trigger Mr Sleuth's meltdown into an anomic suicide.

The landlady, one of the main characters, attends an inquest into one of the Avenger's victims and suffers in silent agony because she may know the identity of the murderer -- it is likely her pious, affluent yet creepily reclusive lodger -- but if she reveals the truth then her and her husband will face total impoverishment. Shades of William Druitt at his brother's inquest?

Mr Sleuth is Druitt-like: he is young, handsome, charming, loaded with dough, an English toff initially above suspicion, and not a doctor but a mentally-unstable lodger who vanishes, correctly presumed a suicide.

In his 1914 memoir, Macnaghten explicitly denies a connection between this fiction and reality, but then cheekily lifts a critical plot detail from the same popular novel -- one in which there is no less than a fictionalized version of himself. In the novel Mr Sleuth becomes the prime suspect for his landlords because he is a recluse, yet his rare nocturnal wanderings coincide exactly with each of the Avenger atrocities. Likewise the un-named Druitt is implied by Macnaghten to have lived with family who cannot help but notice the suspicious timings of his being "absented" (Sims will make the same "Lodger" point in an article of 1915, even mentioning Blackheath). The killer's "own people", it is implied in Macnaghten's book, were the source of the "certain facts" which led to a "conclusion" as to this man's complicity -- although "several years after" the Ripper had destroyed himself.

Since the real Montague Druitt was a lodger (and did not reside with nearest and dearest) and was far from being an unemployed recluse, how did "his own people", in reality, come to this this ghastly revelation? It cannot be from his killing himself within an hour of the Mary Kelly atrocity -- as in the tales of Farquharson and Sims, because in the same memoir the ex-chief has the suicide happening the next day (or night ... or longer).

I argue that this voids the confession-in-deed of the MP and Sims, but Macnaghten did not want to go near the confession-in-word that lay behind it. Instead he debunked "The Lodger" whilst stealing its deus ex machina to explain how he knows the solution to the case albeit a solution, he concedes, that could never be tested by due process. At the time the reviewer for "The New York Times" was not remotely fooled by this having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too, and said so.

[David Orsam]

Confirmation that mine is a legitimate alternate way to interpret the source arrived in 2013 with the discovery of the extraordinary "The True History of Jack the Ripper" by Guy Logan, written in 1905. This tabloid hack was known to George Sims, who in turn knew the truth about Druitt from police chief and close friend, Melville Macnaghten. Logan's open mix of fact and fiction -- although readers deliberately would not know which was which -- has the Druitt/Ripper figure (Mortemer Slade) say, to himself, that he would rather kill himself than end his days in a madhouse for his maniacal atrocities.

There is other accurate data about Druitt in Logan that I think comes from Macnaghten via Sims. This includes Mortemer Slade being an Oxonian, an athlete, has a family history of suicide, is a childless bachelor, leaves false word he is going abroad and does not drown himself instantly after eviscerating Mary Kelly. Slade is also the fair-mustached man seen by Lawende with Eddowes and even MP Henry Farquharson, with a different name of course, arguably makes a walk-on appearance.

I'm afraid I disagree with all this.

To answer the point properly would make a very long post so I've written an article on the topic which anyone interested can find here:

http://www.orsam.co.uk/bridgetoofar.htm

[Jonathan H]

My Response to Critique

I want to thank David Orsom for going to the trouble of reading (and buying) my book and going into detail -- including doing his own research and finding sources I missed -- in order to decide if the thesis has any validity or merit.

In his opinion, it does not.

I have no problem with that, whatsoever. I am sorry the book was such a flop for him, but that's life. I urge anybody interested in this subject to read his point-by-point critique. Do I feel that David has proved my thesis has no validity? No, I don't think he made a significant dent in it -- which is not to say that he did not find mistakes.

That the critic (that's not used pejoratively) has had to [mostly] take on only one aspect of the thesis (Logan's serial) is fine with me, not because it makes for a proper review -- it does not -- but because it leaves the rest of it untouched.

The substance of my rebuttal is that David has made some errors of interpretation, both large and small. In other words, he counter-argues against arguments I did not make and do not believe.

In fairness to the reviewer perhaps his misunderstanding is a result of the book being poorly written and/or expressed, e.g. in too convoluted and obscure a style. That's a fair criticism too, which I need to take on board for my next book -- big time! Being obscure to the point where people get the wrong end of the stick is very disappointing.

I would just add the following comments, which will only make sense to the two or three people who have read both the book and the critique.

Where I agree with David:

1. Macnaghten is demonstrably wrong about the details of other criminal cases with which he was personally involved, therefore so much for Mr. Super-memory. I agree that Mac was quite simply wrong, and does not seem to have been deceitful for propagandist purposes either.

2. As a responsible and canny civil servant, Macnaghten would not have written "said to be a doctor", as I argued in the book, to simply lie outright to the Home Secretary (and his own immediate superiors), and to leave himself so exposed if it all went pear-shaped.

3. I have since learned that the "North Country Vicar" really was a Vicar in the North, whereas I had argued in the book he was Vicar Charles Druitt in the South-west (he wasn't, though the latter took the confession. Since I offer no evidence at this point for this bald assertion, David is well within his rights to accept the first bit and to ignore the second. The new evidence is embargoed by my agent, and that's that for now).

4. Characterizing Sims' 1891 article, taking the coffee-stall owner's story seriously, as a complete reversal from the same writer's previous articles on this titbit, is over-stated by me to the point of distortion. I think Sims always took it seriously but was confirmed in its truth by seeing a picture of Druitt in 1891.

5. I have misread Logan, about Mortemer Slade never having had a patient. It's simply a mistake on my part, pure and simple.


Where I disagree with David:

1. A key strand of my thesis is that the Vicar was determined to reveal the truth at some point (and this agony of conscience; an Anglican clergyman receiving a confession to a murder from a later deceased killer and wondering if he is obliged to go public, is dramatized in Sims' "The Priest's Secret", 1892) and this was what forced the hand of Macnaghten and Sims. Had it not been for the Vicar, the pair would no doubt have kept the truth to themselves.

Sims I argue was in on it, as a mutual friend of Colonel Majendie. Hence the Vicar's tale was not one approved by Macnaghten, though he may have begged for it to be semi-fictionalized like the MP, and thus they had to go into damage control -- for example, by Sims quashing it, What David misses is that Sims quashes it on the basis of a detail, making a confession, that the real killer, he says, could not have done. But we know that Druitt had plenty of time to make a confession. Sure enough, that's the detail that eliminates the police from the tale. Sims pouts the police back him on the verge of arresting the "mad doctor". Once Sims introduced the sojourn in an asylum element, this was a confession-in-word too, but to doctors not a priest.

2. Macnaghten wrote "family", and Griffiths changed this (or it was changed for him) into "friends". Sims went further and has the "friends" trying to find the "doctor" after he has vanished from the place in which he had been living. This is, in my opinion, too close to the real Druitt, whose older brother was searching for him after he vanished, to be yet another coincidence.

3. David misses completely that what we have here is a series of Late Victorian and Edwardian sources about Druitt which persistently show that the real suspect has been disguised. The question is whether this was by accident or deliberate, e,g, to protect all concerned. The Vicar of 1899 claims he is deliberately mixing fact and fiction, as does Logan in 1905.

In 1905, also, a reporter claimed that Sims told him that he could say only so much about the real killer because, to say more, would identify him and his prominent London family to scandal and shame. But Sims has already revealed so much that the toff circles who know this family could not help but identify the "mad doctor" who drowned himself in the Thames from the Embankment. He did this, Sims writes, in the early morning of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. Is it really just luck that the Druitts, and their relations, cannot be identified from what Sims writes? That he was a young barrister from Dorset who drowned himself three weeks after the Kelly murder -- in Chiswick.

4. I stand by my interpretation of Logan, except for the mistake about Slade not having any patients. David and I will just have to agree to disagree about the meaning of this source. Druitt went to Oxford, suicide ran in his family, he was an athlete (eh, it just means athletic as opposed to Sims' "mad doctor" who is a near-invalid, bone-idle recluse), has a fair moustache (as did Eddowes' likely killer and as does Slade, albeit false), would rather kill himself than go back into an asylum and left false word he was going abroad. There is also a possible cameo of Farquharson in Logan, unmentioned by David.

5. For a number of reasons and sources I stand by my portrait of Macnaghten as harmlessly and discreetly deceitful, and as a sly propagandist. We will just have to agree to disagree on that fundamental point. Logan is great for me, but more important, much more important is Macnaghten's memoir chapter "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper"(1914) and my interpretation of that as closer to the truth about the real Druitt than Farquharson, Sims or Logan.

Finally I would like to say this.

David, as he has done with other authors he has critiqued, likes to utilize message board postings. That's his right, but it's a bit off -- a touch FBIish. An author should be judged on their published work, and message board postings should be met by counter-postings in the same location.

However, with mine he does not quote the posts on the Boards that mean the most to me about Guy Logan. I had written for years that Sims had written as if the police were chasing the Ripper to the Thames, and here was a contemporaneous source that does just that. I had written that the Druitt paraphrase: "I was afraid I was going like mother" actually meant that Druitt probably feared being sectioned like his mother, and here was a source that said just that. I had written for years that Druitt "going abroad" was just that, and here ... well, you know how this ends.

My most basic critique of this critic is that he is in danger of being reductionist; that he knows only how to take down by cherry-picking minor errors and thus to endlessly wander the forest vainly searching for the trees.

David made the same error with Simon Wood's excellent and thought-provoking book (and Simon and I totally disagree about what really happened, but so what?). Though he has gone to a lot of time and trouble, I'm sorry but it is not a proper review, which would take on the whole book and not just an aspect. For example, two of Sim's other short stories from 1897 also parallel elements of the Druitt solution, but go unmentioned here in this critique of just the Logan chapter.

It's all a bit odd really, but if that's how he wants to play it, so be it. It's by no means a worthless exercise, but it is in danger of just judging the size of an elephant by its tail. I think David Halberstam gets LBJ quite wrong in "The Best and the Brightest" (1972) and if I just focused on that aspect I could make this modern classic of nuclear-angry, polemical journalism seem hopelessly off-track -- whereas the overall thesis is sound and persuasive. Or how about "Network" (1976), which loosely predicted Trump's success? It is pretty indifferently photographed but is still one of the greatest movies ever made for its prescient script and powerhouse acting.

I hope that David can learn something too: that agreeing to disagree is not intellectual surrender from either side. It's just an impasse, but people can still wave from either sides of the shore. It does not have to be a middle finger.

[David Orsam]

Response to JH part 1

I thank Jonathan for responding to my article but he has not quite understood what I have written. It was not "a proper review" nor a "full review" of his book as he seems to think was my intention. It’s not even a "point by point critique." And I certainly did not describe his book as "a flop".

I thought I made it clear in #19 that my article was a response to his post #16 in this thread, or rather the last two paragraphs of it. The article itself makes clear that I am only responding to Jonathan's claim that Mortemer Slade is based on the historical Druitt and that we can learn facts about the historical Druitt from Guy Logan's story. That's it. That is the sole and only purpose of the article. The very title "A Bridge Too Far: the Curious Case of Mortemer Slade" should have signalled what I was writing about. It was not an article about the entire book and everything in it.

However, as I also made clear in the article, for me to have simply rebutted the points Jonathan made about the supposed similarities between Druitt and Slade and concluded that Slade was not Druitt would have been far too simplistic bearing in mind the intricate complexities and multi layers of the argument. I needed to set the argument about Druitt/Slade into the context of Jonathan's wider theory. Had I not done this, I am sure that Jonathan would have believed that I had not understood his book and responded on this basis. I needed to convey to Jonathan (as to well as to other readers of the article) that I understood the context but that the context does not change anything in respect of understanding Logan's story.

In Jonathan's response, he criticises me for not referring to two of Sims' other short stories from 1897 which, he claims, also parallel elements of the Druitt solution yet, in the introduction, I actually say "Hainsworth may be correct in certain of the connections that he has identified between some fictional stories and Montague Druitt". It was the Bridge Too Far of Logan's story that I was dealing with.

That does not mean that I accept he has identified any other connections by any means, only that it was not the point of the article to investigate each one (and my reading of his book is that any other connections, apart from the 'Dr Bluitt' story, are very uncertain).

Let’s take Sims’ 1897 "The Helsham Mystery" (which is not a story about the Whitechapel murders or anything connected with those murders). Jonathan tells us that this involved a young aristocrat, not a murderer, who was feared to have drowned. Druitt was not an aristocrat but was later supposed to have been murderer. He was never "feared" to have drowned as far as we know. There aren’t even any basic similarities here. It's not worth the time of discussing it.

It really doesn’t matter much, however, if there is a connection between any of Sims' fictional stories and Druitt because I was dealing only with Guy Logan. In that respect, Jonathan hasn't even proven any kind of close connection between Logan and Sims, let alone proven that Sims was aware of the identity of Mac's suspect. I certainly don’t think it’s good enough simply to say that Sims was a good friend of Mac as if this means that Mac automatically blabbed everything connected with his work to him.

Where I would like to praise Jonathan in his response, if I may, is in the fact that he has frankly admitted to a few mistakes in his book. This has not always been the case with other writers whose arguments and books I have written about. It is to his credit that he has accepted and acknowledged those errors. Some people seem literally unable to do it.

I am particularly pleased to discover from Jonathan that the 'north country vicar' was not, in fact, a west country vicar. It is always gratifying when one's deductions are proved to be correct.

I gave reasons in the article why I thought that the 'north country vicar' must have lived in the north country and it seems that I was right. Given that outcome, it is, I think, fair to point out that there is always a danger when reading something as the plain opposite of what is being stated. It was one thing that troubled me throughout Jonathan's book (as I would have said had I been writing a review of it). Everything has to be read as the opposite of, or different to, its natural meaning so that a north country vicar means a west country vicar. A doctor means a barrister. Friends means family. Everything has to be re-interpreted - other than things that actually do match Druitt where, surprise surprise, there is no re-interpretation required. It's a very dangerous mind set for a researcher and I do fear that Jonathan has fallen into the trap of confirmation bias, seeing what he wants to see when interpreting fictional works, hence his mistake about the vicar.

It will, however, be very interesting to learn the real identity of the vicar. If Jonathan can actually substantiate his claim that Charles Druitt took the confession, that will be interesting. Strangely, however, Jonathan suggests that I ignore this possibility whereas in the article I actually state that "The fact that the vicar might have resided in the north country does not by itself destroy Hainsworth's theory because the vicar told the Daily Mail reporter that he only knew about the confession from being told about it by another vicar and that vicar might have come from the west country. " If Charles Druitt was the other vicar then it actually supports what I was saying about the possibility of the vicar being Mac's informant rather than Farquharson. Jonathan has not dealt with the point in his response.

Jonathan's admission that Sims did take the coffee-stall keeper's story seriously in 1891 absolutely blows out of the water his repeated claim that Sims knew the identity of Mac's suspect in that year. The acceptance that there was no U-turn by Sims over this means that the only evidence Jonathan thought he had to support such a notion has vanished into thin air. Given that Sims said absolutely nothing to indicate he knew that the Ripper was a mad doctor until 1899, after Griffiths revealed it, there is now, I would suggest, no reason to believe that he thought anything different prior to the publication of Griffiths' book in 1898. It's an important point because it undermines the Mac-Sims-Logan chain of information.

On the mistake about Mortemer Slade never having had a patient, I don't want to give Jonathan a hard time, he has put his hands up to an error and that is very fair of him. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling, as I say in the article, that this mistake arises out of Jonathan's mind set of certainty that Slade and Druitt were identical so that he convinced himself into thinking that Slade did not have any patients (like Druitt, the non-doctor) - as if Logan was including some sort of coded message in his story that Slade was not a real doctor. I believe it is the mind set which has contributed to Jonathan misreading the entire Logan story as a Druitt analogy, although I appreciate that he doesn't accept this.

On the two other points where Jonathan says he agrees with me, both about Macnaghten, I'm not sure if he is now saying that Mac probably was confused in 1894 about Druitt's profession. If he is saying that, then isn't that most of the entire thesis gone?

[Jonathan H]

To David

Yes, fair enough. I am juggling many things at once and am sorry for rushing.

I would just make these three observations and I apologize that I, for now, remain as cryptic as Macnaghten about the first one.

Firstly, in the filed version of his 1894 report, Macnaghten wrote no errors from memory about Druitt. But I agree with David -- if Macnaghten had written that Druitt was a doctor because he really thought he was a doctor that would be damaging to my thesis. Not fatal by any means but damaging because my revisionist take rests on creating a new Macnaghten: the sly, boy's own propagandist.

More on that aspect down the road.

Secondly it is March 1st 1891 when Sims zeroes in on the picture of himself on "The Social Kaleidoscope" of 1879 (whereas the original 1889 source on this alleged witness had said a copy of his poems by Dagonet, which is a different picture of the author) that makes me still think that he had seen a picture of Druitt by that date.

Finally I do not think Logan knew anything about Druitt, perhaps not even his name. He was just fed stuff from Sims, some of which was real and other bits fiction. Logan added the melodrama from other sources creating an impenetrable confection. But the bits that match Druitt are, in my opinion, too coincidental -- along with the other Sims short stories I have cited.

Again I publicly thank David for going to all that trouble and we will have to agree to disagree on the rest.

[David Orsam]

Response to JH part 2

I deal in this post with Jonathan's stated areas of disagreement between us using his numbering:

Point 1

I made clear in the article that I didn't (and still don't) understand what Jonathan is saying about Sims' rubbishing of the vicar's story in 1899. In his book, Jonathan tells us that Mac was responsible for encouraging the vicar to go public ten years after the murder of Kelly. Thus he says (in the book):

"I think that Macnaghten may have succeeded in convincing the Anglican minister, if he met with him too, to reveal the truth about the drowned barrister’s confession but with two provisos: not to do it until ten years had passed since Montie was buried and to intermingle the truth with lies."

So what strange agenda was Mac carrying out by simultaneously encouraging the story to be published in a certain form then rubbishing it?

But if Jonathan is wrong and it wasn't Mac, thus potentially explaining why he would have rubbished the vicar's story, who was it who directed the vicar to go public in 1899? The other vicar? But then why wouldn’t it have been that vicar whose task it was to take the story public? Could it have been Druitt? But Druitt didn’t confess to the north country vicar did he?

If it was Druitt’s dying wish that his story be told after 10 years then why did the vicar not follow his dying wish? The Daily Mail didn’t even publish any of the story in its semi-fictionalized form. So why didn’t the vicar actually ensure that he did what he had been asked to do by Druitt?

Now, I can sort of understand an argument that the vicar forced Mac's hand which is why Mac ensured that Griffiths published the basic story in 1898.

It is a problematic argument though because if the vicar was not under Mac's control, thus forcing his hand, might that vicar not have spilt all the beans to the Daily Mail and revealed that Druitt was the Ripper? In doing so, he could have revealed that it wasn’t a mad doctor after all, thus making Griffiths look stupid (and wrong), and messing up everything Mac was supposedly striving towards?

If, on the other hand, the vicar WAS under Mac's control then why did Mac need to do anything in advance if the story was going to come out anyway from the vicar in what he knew was going to be semi-fictitious form? And if the vicar was under Mac's control, why did Sims rubbish the story? I can understand that Mac and Sims might have feared beforehand what the vicar might say but once it became clear that he had covered up everything, and lied about Druitt's profession by calling him a surgeon, surely there was no need to do any rubbishing.

If the vicar, however, was not under Mac's control then wasn’t there a real danger that the vicar, in response to being rubbished, might then have revealed Druitt's name in order to prove that his story was true?

Jonathan's argument here is impossible to make sense of and seemingly contradictory. He tells me that Mac "may have begged for it [the vicar’s story] to be semi-fictionalized like the MP, and thus they had to go into damage control -- for example, by Sims quashing it".

If I read the above correctly, Mac has successfully persuaded the vicar to semi-fictionalize his story but this is somehow a reason for quashing that very same story!

A point I make in the article is that if the story is "semi-fictionalized" what damage was there to control? No-one could possibly have identified Druitt from the north country vicar's story in the Daily Mail, not least because he subsequently told the journalist that the Ripper was a surgeon, which Druitt was not.

Jonathan tells me this:

"What David misses is that Sims quashes it on the basis of a detail, making a confession, that the real killer, he says, could not have done. But we know that Druitt had plenty of time to make a confession. Sure enough, that's the detail that eliminates the police from the tale. Sims pouts the police back him on the verge of arresting the "mad doctor". Once Sims introduced the sojourn in an asylum element, this was a confession-in-word too, but to doctors not a priest"

I must confess that I don't understand a word of that. It seems to have no meaning. How does the fact that Druitt did or did not have time to make a confession (and I really can’t work out which one it is), eliminate the police from the tale? What relevance is there of the killer having once been in an asylum which Sims did not even mention in his 1899 article? In fact, the asylum wasn't mentioned by Sims until 1902. If the asylum was so important for damage control of the vicar’s story why did Sims not mention it in 1899? The argument is all over the place.

I said in my article that Sims could simply have accepted the vicar's tale and said something like, "yes, the vicar has correctly identified the Ripper: it's the mad doctor mentioned by Griffiths, the police were on his tail and closing in but then he committed suicide." Jonathan hasn’t explained why he couldn’t have done this. So it's not that I have "missed" anything, it’s that I simply don't understand it.

Point 2

Nor do I understand the significance in changing "family" to "friends". What would it have mattered if the public believed that the family of the mad doctor had been searching for him? The doctor was unidentified (and Druitt wasn't a doctor) nor did the public have a clue that Druitt's brother had been searching for him. So what possible benefit was there for anyone in deliberately changing "family" to "friends". I just don't see it and as far as I am concerned Jonathan hasn't explained it.

Point 3

Apparently I have also missed that there is "a series of Late Victorian and Edwardian sources about Druitt which persistently show that the real suspect has been disguised." I really haven't missed anything.

Other than the 'Dr Bluitt' story (which is surely too close to Dr Druitt to be a coincidence) I suspect these sources are all in Jonathan's imagination but it doesn't matter if they are not. It gets us absolutely nowhere towards knowing what Guy Logan was doing. What Jonathan, however, has completely ignored is my rather important point that Logan tells us in Famous Crimes that he personally knew a mad but brilliant doctor who was at times in an asylum and who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Despite the critical importance of this, Jonathan ignored it in his book and he's ignored it again in his post which is supposed to be a response to my article.

Jonathan tells also me that:

"In 1905, also, a reporter claimed that Sims told him that he could say only so much about the real killer because, to say more, would identify him and his prominent London family to scandal and shame."

This supposed claim by a reporter from 1905 is not, as far as I am aware, included in Jonathan’s book – I know nothing about it - so how am I supposed to respond to it and what is its significance to my article in any case?

Jonathan continues: "But Sims has already revealed so much that the toff circles who know this family could not help but identify the "mad doctor" who drowned himself in the Thames from the Embankment. He did this, Sims writes, in the early morning of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. Is it really just luck that the Druitts, and their relations, cannot be identified from what Sims writes? That he was a young barrister from Dorset who drowned himself three weeks after the Kelly murder -- in Chiswick."

This doesn’t seem to make much sense because it seems to be saying both that Sims revealed Druitt’s identity AND concealed it at the same time it but I can’t honestly say I understand it.

What, I ask, is significance of any of this? How is it responding to my article?

Point 4

At last! In his fourth point, Jonathan deals with the actual issues raised in my article – in respect of whether Slade was Druitt – but does so in one very short paragraph, almost as if it's irrelevant, even though it was the very core of what I was writing about. He does no more than baldly repeat the list of supposed similarities between Slade and Druitt that he already posted in #16 (and which he has repeatedly posted elswhere) to which I was responding in my article. He hasn't added anything new but I will take the individual points of alleged similarity one by one.

Oxford

That Druitt want to Oxford is absolutely meaningless. So what? As did many people.

Suicide in the family

Suicide ran in the family for both men, apparently, but how did Logan even know this about Druitt? Is Sims really likely to have known it? And saying "suicide ran in the family" is just a way of disguising that it was an uncle who drowned for Slade while a grandmother of Druitt apparently committed suicide in some way that Jonathan does not reveal in his book. So the very real differences here are being hidden by a bland and virtually meaningless phrase.

Athlete

Now we learn that by "athlete", Jonathan only really means "athletic" but he doesn't quite explain the difference between the two words. Does he mean "athletic build"?

More importantly, he fails to comment on the fact that Slade was a boxer (for a specific plot purpose) whereas Druitt was a cricketer. He is simply trying to sweep aside these major differences by pretending that boxer and cricketer is the same because both sports are supposedly participated in by people who are athletic.

The fact is that Jonathan repeatedly describes Druitt as an "athlete" in his book and I think he does so for the sole purpose of boosting the comparison to Slade. He now tells us, without any supporting evidence, that Sims' Ripper was "a near invalid bone idle recluse” but if that's true and Logan was briefed by Sims about the Ripper, yet nevertheless turned Slade into an athlete, the opposite of an invalid bone idle recluse, how does that even make any sense? Why didn’t Sims want Logan to portray the killer in exactly the same way as he did? Jonathan evidently believes that Sims’ "near invalid bone idle recluse" was Druitt yet he also believes that Logan’s athletic boxer was Druitt! It’s always Druitt, it seems, whether invalid or athlete.

Moustache

Jonathan tells us that Druitt had a fair moustache but that is precisely what Slade did not have! He had to wear a false one. But why? Why was he not given a moustache by Logan? If he had one, there is no doubt whatsoever that Jonathan would have said: Druitt had a moustache and Slade had a moustache. But, here, the fact that Slade did not have a moustache is used as evidence that he was based on Druitt! If he has a moustache it’s Druitt if he doesn’t have a moustache it’s Druitt. I'm afraid it is Alice in Wonderland logic.

Back to an asylum

Jonathan tells us that Slade would "rather kill himself than go back into an asylum" which is supposed to be the same as Druitt but this cannot possibly right be because Druitt had never been committed in an asylum (so he couldn't have feared going back into one) and Druitt never said anything about killing himself because he did not want to go into an asylum. He only referred to worrying that he was going to be like his mother (i.e. mad) in his suicide note. The truly relevant fact is that Slade did not kill himself but Druitt did. Why on earth did THAT happen if Slade was based on Druitt?

Going Abroad

Then we are told that Slade and Druitt both left word that they were going abroad. Well, if Jonathan knows as a fact about Druitt that he left word he was going abroad, why does he even feel the need to rely on Logan's story to support it? Circular argument alert.

As for Slade, he most certainly did NOT "leave word" that he was going abroad. It was an excuse given to his landlady and to her alone so that he could move quickly from his lodgings. There is nothing in the story which tells us that Slade expected the landlady to tell anyone else nor that he was using it as a cover so that anyone else would think he had gone abroad.

In another part of his post, Jonathan has referred to some of his early online postings (before he read Logan's book) in which he apparently claimed that Druitt had told people he had gone abroad. As I mentioned in the article, this is not proof that Slade was based on Druitt. On the contrary, it is part of the problem which explains why Jonathan has misread Logan's story. Having noted, in a totally different context, Slade's mention to his landlady of going abroad, Jonathan has become so certain that this proves he was right about everything, and is so certain he is correct about Slade being Druitt, that he can only focus on the minor similarities between Slade and Druitt while completely ignoring all the numerous, and rather important, differences. I set out quite a lot of these differences in my article yet it will be noted that Jonathan has not a single word to say about them in his response. He is, I would suggest, blind to them.

I might add that Jonathan also claims that he has said in his posts for years that Sims had written "as if the police were chasing the Ripper to the Thames". I don't know if Jonathan wrote those words or not – he gives no supporting references - but having searched the word "Thames" in the collection of Sims' articles posted on this website it is clear that Sims himself said nothing of the sort. Saying that Slade was "chased by the police to the Thames" is nothing more than a narrow and misleading interpretation of what happens in Logan's story and is certainly untrue in respect of what happened to Druitt and, more importantly, what was believed by Mac to have happened to Druitt.

Jonathan also tells us that he had written for years that Druitt feared being sectioned like his mother. That may be so but Slade did not express any fears of being sectioned considering that he had already been committed to an asylum from which he had escaped. It wasn't a fear of being sectioned that troubled him but a fear of being sent back into an asylum for the rest of his life.

Farquharson

For some very strange reason, after setting out his list of supposed similarities between Slade and Druitt, Jonathan then mentions the highly tentative claim in his book that one of the fictional members of parliament in Logan's story might have been Henry Farquharson. He actually suggests I should have dealt with this point in my article. Well, honestly! I deliberately ignored it because it is only presented in the book as a "perhaps" – so even if I had wasted time on it, Jonathan could simply have said it was never more than a passing thought - and there is certainly no good reason whatsoever to accept it. Here is what Jonathan says about it in his book (my bold added):

"Even the young, aristocratic Tory member for West Dorset, Henry Farquharson, perhaps makes a cameo appearance, and he too has been transplanted up north."

He then quotes from Logan’s story:

“Viscount Hardcastle was the elder son of the Earl of Dewsbury. He represented a northern constituency in the Tory interests, and was regarded as somewhat of a political firebrand. ‘A clever young man,’ the Premier had pronounced him, ‘but there is a little too much venom in his speeches.”

So why does Jonathan think that this MP, a viscount from a northern constituency whose name is nothing like Farquharson could possibly be supposed to represent Henry Farquharson from a west country constituency who was not a viscount? Well, here's the thing: Jonathan doesn't tell us! But he does ask us a question: "Is the ‘venom’ a veiled reference to the 1893 libel case Farquharson lost that seems to have tarnished his reputation, even in death?".

And that’s it. Just a question but no answer. Not the slightest actual connection between the two men. Did a prime minster ever refer to Farquharson as 'A clever young man' so that there is at least some rational reason to think they might be one and the same person. Alas not. Does Jonathan really think that Henry Farquharson, who had died ten years before Logan published his account, was the only member of parliament in living memory who could possibly have been described as a political firebrand with venom? And more to the point, does Jonathan think that every character in a work of fiction has to be based on a real person?

There is just nothing there and no sensible reason to link the two men. I fail to understand why Jonathan seems to think that it would have been helpful for me to have dealt with this issue in my article. I deliberately ignored it because it is so utterly insignificant and unlikely, especially as Jonathan hedges his bets with that word "perhaps". To have dealt with the point would have been a complete waste of time (as it has been responding to it in this post).

As far as I'm concerned, it is a fantasy based on Jonathan's desire to try and conjure up reality from an obviously fictional story. There is nothing that connects the fictional MP with Farquharson. Is that good enough for Jonathan?

Point 5

Jonathan’s fifth point of disagreement, with its emphasis on the importance of Mac’s memoir, reads to me remarkably like an abandonment of Logan. It’s a great slogan that Jonathan has come up with – "Logan is great for me" ha ha! – but somehow I can’t help feeling that Jonathan realises in his heart that the game is up with respect to the Druitt/Slade comparison. The True History of Jack the Ripper is, it must be concluded, nothing more than a work of fiction.

[David Orsam]

Secondly it is March 1st 1891 when Sims zeroes in on the picture of himself on "The Social Kaleidoscope" of 1879 (whereas the original 1889 source on this alleged witness had said a copy of his poems by Dagonet, which is a different picture of the author) that makes me still think that he had seen a picture of Druitt by that date.

Not sure I quite understand the reasoning behind this point Jonathan.

Isn't the most likely answer that the original 1889 source (which was not written by Sims) was mistaken and that Sims worked out the title of the correct book from his more detailed inquiries later in the year?

Yes, Sims didn't mention the book title until 1891 but that just happened to be the year when he gave a detailed account of the coffee-stall keeper story and he did so in response to a press report about the police following a living suspect who could (in theory and jokingly) have been Sims himself.

[David Orsam]

Response to JH part 3

Responding now to the last part of Jonathan's post which was, I think, the unnecessary part. I can't help but feel that it would have been better for him to have confined himself to the argument rather than aim to lecture me.

His last sentence was particularly unnecessary, objectionable and patronising. "Agreeing to disagree is not intellectual surrender" he tells me as if I am a child (which, strangely enough, is what he used to think of me before I told him I was 49). I assume that tomorrow he will be telling his grandmother how to suck eggs.

What I say back to him is that either Logan based the character of Mortemer Slade on the historical Montague Druitt or he did not. Holding a perverse view which is presented as "agreeing to disagree" is not what I would call intellectual rigour. We are talking about a factual matter. One of us is right and one of us is wrong. Being right does not mean sticking the middle finger up to anyone. While being wrong is not the end of the world.

Anyway, that said, the main purpose of the second half of his post seems to be to register his objection that I have quoted some of his online postings and that I should have confined myself to his book only. Well, sure, if I had been writing a straightforward review of his book. But what I was doing was responding to his argument and there were occasions where I needed to consult his online postings either to understand his arguments or augment a point I was making.

I will demonstrate this with examples below but, before doing so, I must express some laughter at his claim that my reading and quoting from his public online internet posts in preparation for writing my article was me acting like the FBI! I'm sure if my article had misunderstood simple things that he said in his book, which he has already explained in online postings, he would have berated me for my failure of understanding. As it happens, I did fail to understand some things in his book so I looked to his internet posts for guidance. Why he thinks there is something wrong with that I have no idea.

The absurdity of the idea that someone commenting on the arguments in his book should confine themselves only to the text of the book can be seen by his initial response to my post where he corrected a number of factual matters from his book in the post. Is he seriously saying that anyone commenting on his book in the future must ignore those corrections because they are not in the book? I don't think so. Anyway, to repeat, my article was not about his book as such - and please do go and buy it - but his argument, specifically about his Slade/Druitt argument.

One irony in his complaint is that he tells me he wished I'd quoted from certain other internet posts of his - because they prove he anticipated Logan's story in advance of him reading it - but then does not provide any quotes himself nor tell me when and where such posts can be found. Until I read them I can't say anything sensible about them.

By my count, I refer to Jonathan's online postings on five occasions in my article.

Let's take those five occasions one by one.

1. The first occasion is to mention that Jonathan has reproduced Logan's caveat (that all the particulars but two in his book are true) in his online postings yet his summary in his book of that caveat does not match the reproduction of it that he has posted online. The caveat does not actually appear in the copy of the Logan book that I used (although Jonathan says it is in the book he consulted) and it caused me some angst until I found it in the original newspaper containing the first chapter of Logan's story. Jonathan has not responded to my point that his summary of the caveat does not accurately reflect its contents. Yet it's a rather important point in the context of whether Logan is disguising Slade's identity.

2. The second time I refer to Jonathan's online postings is to strengthen a point I made that Jonathan had somehow managed to convince himself that Slade commits suicide in the story. In his book, he refers to an act of "self-murder" by Slade. I have used two additional online posts in which Jonathan repeats that Slade kills himself or drowns himself. I think this was perfectly fair in producing evidential support of my point that Jonathan confused himself and did so because he was absolutely convinced that Slade was Druitt. Even if we leave the internet posts aside, I note that Jonathan has said nothing about the reference to the "act of self murder" in his book which did not occur in the Logan story.

3. The third occasion when I refer to one of Jonathan's online posts is when I quote him saying that Logan's story offers a "glimpse into what really happened" to Druitt. This reflects exactly what Jonathan also says in the book. Using the online quote was just another way of demonstrating why Jonathan thinks the Logan story is important.

4. The next occasion was the important "final odyssey" point. It was important for me to quote Jonathan's online posts because the point I make is that Jonathan uses this phrase to mask the fact that Slade tells his landlady that he is going abroad at a totally different point in the chronology of the story to when one would expect him to do so if he was truly based on Druitt. The fact that the use of the phrase is not a one-off supports my belief that he used it carefully and deliberately. Jonathan says nothing about it in his response.

5. Finally - and in similar fashion to the third example above - I wanted to establish precisely what Jonathan thinks can be extracted from the Logan story about Druitt. From his book it seems that it is merely that Druitt went abroad. I noted, however, that in online posts he expanded on the point. So I think it was quite proper to refer to this.

At no time do I criticise Jonathan's book on the basis of things he has said in his online posts (which would of course be unfair) not least because I don't criticise his book at all. I only focus on his arguments.

Well I think that's it. There's no point me mentioning Jonathan's comments about my article on Simon's Wood book which strikes me as wholly irrelevant to this thread and made for a purpose that does not seem to be worth discussing.

But, yes, to the extent that Jonathan says my article is not a "proper review", he is perfectly correct.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Was the North Country Vicar story a promotional stunt?

Is it mere coincidence that the North Country Vicar story [originating in the Daily Mail] coincided with the publication in January 1899 of the reprint of Major Griffiths' “Mysteries of Police and Crime,” a book which it referenced twice, once regarding the body found in the Thames and secondly the Millers Court murder.

Major Griffiths' book was published by Cassell.

On 7th May 1899, the Daily Mail published a four-and-a-half column review of Major Griffiths’ book. The reviewer was Max Pemberton.

From September 1896 to November 1905 Max Pemberton was the editor of Cassell's Magazine, and also a close associate of Alfred Harmsworth [later Lord Northcliffe] who founded the Daily Mail.

Regards,

Simon

[Mayerling]

This post is going to be a bit longer than my usual (which can be long enough). I have to go out on a limb here - and I suspect it will be attacked as frivolous, but be that as it may.....

How many of you out there ever read the short story "The Model Millionaire" by Oscar Wilde?

Not as well known as his plays or "Dorian Gray" or his poetry, or such stories as "The Canterville Ghost", the story is about a young barrister, who wants to marry, and hasn't enough money. He visits his closest friend, who is a painter. The painter is doing a portrait of a pauper. When the painter is not in the studio, the story's protagonist comes in and finds the pauper waiting. Taking pity on the pauper, he gives the pauper a little money for food. The pauper looks at the money, and smiles and thanks the protagonist. Later the protagonist learns the pauper was the richest man in Europe, getting a special portrait of himself dressed as a pauper.

Odd tail but I would have filed it away with other forgotten short stories I read, had it not been for the social historian Frederic Morton. In his book, "The Rothchilds" he mentions that this actually happened to Baron James de Rothschild (of the French branch of the banking family) when he was posing as a pauper for Eugene Delacroix. Norton, by the way, does not mention the Wilde short story.

Now I jump a little....

Now I don't know but this can be a typical urban legend passed about (in one way or another) regarding this rich man or that rich man. But I was surprised that it existed at all outside that story by Wilde. I don't know if you realize this, but Oscar Wilde knew Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur mentions this in his memoirs, "Memories and Adventures". In 1888 he was attending a dinner party at the London residence of the American representative of "Lippincott's", the publishing house. He was not the only writer there. Wilde was there because of business and dinner (as was Conan Doyle). The magazine and book publishers wanted the two men to sign contract to write novels for their firm. Both signed contracts. Conan Doyle was to write a new novel about Sherlock Holmes. Wilde was to write any novel. In the end Doyle would write "The Sign of Four", the second Sherlock Holmes' novel (and story), while Wilde wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

While at that historic dinner, Wilde and Conan Doyle talked. It turned out that Wilde had read one of the latter's novels, the recently published story of Monmouth's Rebellion of 1685, "Micah Clarke", and had enjoyed Conan Doyle's characterization of Judge George Jeffreys (of the "Bloody Assizes"), which showed him as a fallen angel type - the sort that Wilde was curious about.

Here the trail of the Doyle-Wilde friendship sort of gets fuzzy and puzzling. When Doyle's memoirs came out in 1925 it was not really very sound to say, "I was a very close friend of Oscar Wilde!". Wilde's fall from social acceptance due to the sodomy trials of the 1890s made him a liability as far such matters as personal reputation stood in Britain. Only seven years before, in 1918, the dancer Maude Allen, and (as it was) the entire British upper rank of society, was shaken by a preposterous trial regarding an attempt to perform Wilde's "Salome" in public, and the defense successfully bamboozled the jury with wild charges of lesbian and homosexual orgies and culture in the upper rungs of society (claiming it undermined the war effort). The jury found the defenders not guilty.

Doyle, in 1925, was on the great crusade of his life, regarding "spiritualism". He had suffered sad emotional losses among friends who died in World War I, culminating in the death (from an illness in a military hospital) of his son Kingsley. He found in spiritualism a reaffirmation and comfort that physical death did not mean an end for the ones who lost a loved one - that there was a further point where we'd be reunited. However, not everyone believed (or believes) this. Doyle already was pilloried in large segments of the press for such beliefs, and even one recent friendship (with the magician/escapologist Harry Houdini) collapsed due to their disagreement about the subject. He did not need to be additionally questioned about his morals or his mental state by claiming a really good friendship with Wilde.

Of course, this may be reading too much into the three pages in the memoirs regarding the two men. They may have just been acquaintances from that one night's dinner, just like I briefly was acquainted with several celebrities at various book signings I attended. But if Doyle remembered the subject matter of his meeting the man, there must have been more to it. He tries to downplay the whole matter, saying he didn't see Wilde that much, and that he always felt Wilde was somewhat mad (Doyle had tried in World War I to use a similar excuse to try to save the life of Sir Roger Casement in 1916; Casement is recorded as resenting this because he insisted his actions for the Irish Republican cause were not insane). Yet he describes a later event (as proof of Wilde's insanity) where he is in a street with another writer, and Wilde swoops down on them and starts complementing both. It sounds like he actually was closer than the Doyle memoirs suggest.

In 1976 Samuel Rosenberg wrote one of the first really interesting, non-Baker Street Irregular style critiques on Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, "Naked is the Best Disguise". I advise anyone who has never read it to do so. In it, Rosenberg discusses how much that meeting at Lippincott's really affected Doyle. In the opening chapters of "The Sign of Four", the scene in the novel shifts to the mansion home of Thaddeus and Bartholemew Sholto (note that last name), who have been responsible for sending a valuable jewel gift each year for ten to Holmes' new client Mary Morstan. Rosenberg points out (perhaps overreaches in some of his allegorical readings of the story) that Thaddeus Sholto looks like Wilde. The household, in fact, looks like it is a males only one, with muscular servants about to ...err...please their two employers. There is even a portrait, a "Bougereau" on the wall (Rosenberg does point out the hidden possibility of the French artist's name as "Bugger - oh!", but I did say it has some stretching in it). "Sholto" is one of the family names of Lord Alfred Douglas' family.

This is not conclusive, but it is intriguing. I will not suggest that Doyle had a homosexual side like Wilde definitely had, but if what Rosenberg suggests is partially true this relationship with Wilde was not such a "acquaintance" type that he paints it, or tries to paint it, in his memoirs. But to be fair, I never saw any references in Doyle's correspondence to Wilde.

I end up returning now to that short story I began with, "The Model Millionaire". It was part of a small collection of tales called "Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and other stories". published in the early 1890s. The title story may be familiar to you from an old 1940s movie anthology, "Flesh and Fantasy" which had an episode starring Edward G. Robinson that was based on this story (though changed for the movie). Lord Arthur Saville is in love and goes with his fiancé to a social event where the hostess has invited a notable palm reader to "entertain" her guests by reading their futures. All is well until he sees Lord Arthur's hand. Suddenly the palmist becomes very serious and declines talking about the matter. When he corners the palmist alone, Lord Arthur hears that his future involves committing a murder. Wilde, of course, takes this into a series of funny vignettes, as the hopelessly clumsy nobleman can't pull off the murders he plans (it's sort of like the reverse of Dennis Price in "Kind Hearts and Coronets"). Despairing, he can't face breaking with his girlfriend, and he is walking along one of the Thames bridges on a foggy night when in the distance he sees someone familiar - the palmist. The palm reader is looking at the Thames intently, deep in his own thoughts. Seeing nobody around, Lord Arthur sneaks up and throws the Palmist into the Thames. Later the death of the Palmist is called a suicide.
Lord Arthur is last seen happily marrying the girl of his dreams.

Oscar Wilde was not the only one in that period of the early 1890s to write of a death in the Thames not ruled a murder, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote one too! It is called "The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips". The story is usually recalled for the use of orange pips as a warning by the evil doer(s) to do as they demand. It is also recalled because it was the first notable fiction story to mention the very real life threatening organization (which has recently announced it's support for Donald Trump in the Presidential Campaign) of the Ku Klux Klan. If you ever question that Conan Doyle NEVER mentions or uses real life models or beings, this story has one built into it.

Holmes and Watson are visited on a rainy night in 1887 (note the year - it is in the story, by the way), by one John Openshaw (curious name choice - one recalls that "Openshaw letter" in the Ripper case, but I admit this might be stretching things). Openshaw (the character) tells a story about how, since 1883, his uncle, then his father, and now himself, have been threatened by a series of mysterious letters demanding the return of valuable documents to be placed under a sun-dial on the uncle's property. The uncle had served in the CSA army in the American Civil War, and was involved (as it turns out) with the K.K.K. in reconstruction. The uncle destroys the papers rather than return them, and is found dead in an "accident" a few days after. The same happens to the father. Young Openshaw comes to Holmes for help due to receiving the letter with the pips. Holmes agrees to do what he can. However, the following morning Watson reads an account in the newspaper that John Openshaw met with a fatal accident, falling off an embankment into the Thames and drowning.

It is just one writer (Wilde) saw the incident from the perspective of the victim, and the other (Doyle) from that of an onlooker (the newspaper reader or the late arriving witnesses who reported what they heard - Openshaw yelling for help). Odd they chose such distinctly corresponding viewpoints, and (again stretching perhaps) both authors knew each other. Is it possible they had a common source somewhere?

Maybe. Wilde lived in London on Tite Street. His neighbor was Sir Melville Macnaughten.

I have to admit this is a rather loose chain. To some it may be interesting (I certainly find it so). From Doyle to Wilde to Macnaughten, all dealing with a death in the Thames River. Doyle's "accident" that disguises a murder. Wilde's "suicide" that disguises a murder. Macnaughten knowing that a suicide may have hidden the answer to a series of murders. It's seems there, but I admit it is inconclusive.

Now I find a third author writing about that period (1888 to be exact) but in 1905 (the year that Conan Doyle threw in the sponge and revived Sherlock Holmes full time in "The Adventure of the Empty House"). Guy Logan is best recalled for his series of above-average essay like studies of old crimes in books like "Guilty, or Not Guilty?". He's not in the top group of such writers like Pearson, Roughead, Bolitho, Tennyson Jesse, or Smith-Hughes, as they had interesting points of view on how to review the materials of these stories - Logan is just retelling them. From David Orsam's description of the 1905 novella, it sounds pretty outlandish, so accept it if I don't read it.

But that conclusion with the detective and Slade fighting it out on the bridge in a thunder storm (how moralistic in a way - God's about to zap somebody, like he will zap "Robur the Conqueror" in Verne's sequel novel, "Master of the World" in 1904), and sure enough BOTH are killed. But only the body of the mysterious surgeon (or was it physician, or barrister,, or school master, or candlestick maker?) is recovered when they fall into the Thames. The body of the great detective is not found after the fall is over. Just like Holmes' body would not be found at the base of the Reichenbach Falls after he and Moriarty supposedly fall in wrapped in each other's arms in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" (1893). Oh, but as I mentioned before, in 1905 Doyle (having previously resurrected Holmes in part in his "The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) - but that was a memoir of Holmes) fully brought him back to walk the streets of London again. He was luckier than Logan's detective, but then...how do we really know Logan's detective is dead too?

Sorry for the long, long length.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

I knew, sadly, that this is how it would turn out. I hoped to be proven wrong. No mater how polite and bipartisan and fair you try and be it makes no damn difference with a person who cannot, by temperament, agree to disagree -- who cannot handle any dissent from their opinion (which they think are "facts", rather than an interpretation of incomplete bits and pieces).

The reason I gave David the benefit of the doubt, years ago, that he must be a young person, one with a lot of time on his hands, is because of his woeful ignorance about the things he writes about. Yet he writes with such certainty about historical subjects, about which we can only provide the best argument from limited and contradictory sources.

Not so, thunders David, in all of his critiques! There is only a right way and a wrong way.

When I have brought up examples of other historical works to make this point, David always ignores it. Has he read no history at all That's hardly a crime but a bit rich to set yourself up as omnipotent about the subject.

When I try and show him that he is way too narrow in his perception of the science of history, this is rejected as "lecturing". This is an extreme form of passive-aggressive behavior because what it attempts to do, whether consciously or not, is to shut down the debate. Shut down the other person's tools of debate. It's intellectually indefensible, though the early years of century are rife with examples right across western culture, so he is hardly alone.

And does David not lecture me in how I should have framed by response and when I should have got out whilst the going was good?

Such rank hypocrisy.

I am simply defending myself against an amateur writer who has denounced my book as hopeless through and through; essentially a pseudo-novelistic act of creative imagination -- and he, and anybody else, has every right to say exactly that and denounce it as that! But do I not have the same right to defend myself? To try and show him how he is obsessed with trivia and misses the overall. I gave examples of this, as I have before, and it is met with seething resentment, with tantrums about how only one of us can be right (and that ain't gonna ever be me).

David misread (or I put it too obscurely) a central tenet of my thesis and, though I have pointed this out to him here, several times, he has never acknowledged this. Again this is youthful or willful behavior, and there is not much I can do about it.

For the first time Sims in March 1891 specified a picture of himself as looking like the [alleged] real killer, and this was just days after a toff from Macnaghten's ruling elite had begun telling people in London about Druitt, the very suspect that this chief would go to his grave believing, rightly or wrongly, was the Ripper (and said so, publicly, that he was certain in 1913). In my opinion that's too big a coincidence, because in 1914 Macnaghten says that "some years after" he learned this truth, and "some years after" Sims points to the one picture -- which due to illness he appears unusually gaunt and his hair, just this once, is parted in the dead center -- broadly resembles school pictures of Druitt.

That's my take and if people want to dissent from it, fine by me. But to say that I am ignoring the "facts" is ludicrous and misunderstands historical methodology in very depressing ways from a person who is not young at all.

When I wrote that I agreed with David in some of his criticism of my book, with one exception all minor complaints, he replied that this was praiseworthy. But my rebuttal also included much more important aspects where we remain in disagreement, and this has not been absorbed -- as to be expected from a black-and-white temperament. Instead the notion of competing theories being allowed to co-exist is anathema to him. Again, this is an error common to youth (or at least it used to be) and not people of mature age who have learned that, God help us, people are messy, life is a mess, people act in paradoxical, self-defeating ways, and so on.

If we had a time machine then many competing arguments and interpretations could be absolutely resolved (hey, it was "Kosminski"!). But until then multiple possibilities have to exist, the merits of which are in the eye of the beholder (and not the optic of a single beholder).

For example, Simon Wood has just posted on this thread an argument that the "North Country Vicar" is made up. A sort of publicity stunt for Griffiths' book. It's possible, but I think unlikely. Why? Because the story is ruined by the concession that it is partly fictitious (but which parts?). If the whole thing were a put-up job you would hardly admit this in part. Several reproductions of the article at the time do drop this let-down element ("The Illustrated Police News" for one). So, does that disprove Simon's opinion? Not at all. But it is why, until other clarifying sources appear -- as I believe they have but cannot show yet -- I subscribe to the opinion that I have already outlined in my book: the Vicar is real and he is writing about Druitt in disguise (as does Griffiths, Sims and Logan). Despite what I claim to have found, could I still be wrong and Simon correct? Of course, I often am wrong (and have never claimed to be an especially bright or clever person, and certainly not a 'sleuth', but you get up in the morning and you put one sock on at a time, and, you know, get on with it).

Sorry if you feel I have lectured at you, Simon.

David's manic debunking of myself, Simon, Wolf, Michael and Roger Palmer (who's next?) and the inappropriate and creepy use of message board comments has an extremely youthful pathology to it (the very title of one of his pieces, "The Suckered Trilogy", is particularly juvenile) but we all seem to have been attacked in the same way (very personally, e.g. as Don Quixote-style fools) but from the margins rather than at the center. Oh well, any over-excited pup can nip at your heels, it's not a big deal.

In his previous post David writes that he is not criticizing my work, just my arguments. First of all he can criticize my book all he likes. Secondly the book is an argument.

Life is short and the world can be very beautiful.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

We're cool. I do not feel at all lectured.

I could well be wrong in my construing of the timing and connections of the North Country Vicar story, which is fine with me, but in the interests of fair play you have to lay all these annoying little coincidences on the table, if only to later consign them to the rubbish bin.

Nil desperandum.

Simon

[Abby Normal]

I knew, sadly, that this is how it would turn out. I hoped to be proven wrong. No mater how polite and bipartisan and fair you try and be it makes no damn difference with a person who cannot, by temperament, agree to disagree -- who cannot handle any dissent from their opinion (which they think are "facts", rather than an interpretation of incomplete bits and pieces).

The reason I gave David the benefit of the doubt, years ago, that he must be a young person, one with a lot of time on his hands, is because of his woeful ignorance about the things he writes about. Yet he writes with such certainty about historical subjects, about which we can only provide the best argument from limited and contradictory sources.

Not so, thunders David, in all of his critiques! There is only a right way and a wrong way.

When I have brought up examples of other historical works to make this point, David always ignores it. Has he read no history at all That's hardly a crime but a bit rich to set yourself up as omnipotent about the subject.

When I try and show him that he is way too narrow in his perception of the science of history, this is rejected as "lecturing". This is an extreme form of passive-aggressive behavior because what it attempts to do, whether consciously or not, is to shut down the debate. Shut down the other person's tools of debate. It's intellectually indefensible, though the early years of century are rife with examples right across western culture, so he is hardly alone.

And does David not lecture me in how I should have framed by response and when I should have got out whilst the going was good?

Such rank hypocrisy.

I am simply defending myself against an amateur writer who has denounced my book as hopeless through and through; essentially a pseudo-novelistic act of creative imagination -- and he, and anybody else, has every right to say exactly that and denounce it as that! But do I not have the same right to defend myself? To try and show him how he is obsessed with trivia and misses the overall. I gave examples of this, as I have before, and it is met with seething resentment, with tantrums about how only one of us can be right (and that ain't gonna ever be me).

David misread (or I put it too obscurely) a central tenet of my thesis and, though I have pointed this out to him here, several times, he has never acknowledged this. Again this is youthful or willful behavior, and there is not much I can do about it.

For the first time Sims in March 1891 specified a picture of himself as looking like the [alleged] real killer, and this was just days after a toff from Macnaghten's ruling elite had begun telling people in London about Druitt, the very suspect that this chief would go to his grave believing, rightly or wrongly, was the Ripper (and said so, publicly, that he was certain in 1913). In my opinion that's too big a coincidence, because in 1914 Macnaghten says that "some years after" he learned this truth, and "some years after" Sims points to the one picture -- which due to illness he appears unusually gaunt and his hair, just this once, is parted in the dead center -- broadly resembles school pictures of Druitt.

That's my take and if people want to dissent from it, fine by me. But to say that I am ignoring the "facts" is ludicrous and misunderstands historical methodology in very depressing ways from a person who is not young at all.

When I wrote that I agreed with David in some of his criticism of my book, with one exception all minor complaints, he replied that this was praiseworthy. But my rebuttal also included much more important aspects where we remain in disagreement, and this has not been absorbed -- as to be expected from a black-and-white temperament. Instead the notion of competing theories being allowed to co-exist is anathema to him. Again, this is an error common to youth (or at least it used to be) and not people of mature age who have learned that, God help us, people are messy, life is a mess, people act in paradoxical, self-defeating ways, and so on.

If we had a time machine then many competing arguments and interpretations could be absolutely resolved (hey, it was "Kosminski"!). But until then multiple possibilities have to exist, the merits of which are in the eye of the beholder (and not the optic of a single beholder).

For example, Simon Wood has just posted on this thread an argument that the "North Country Vicar" is made up. A sort of publicity stunt for Griffiths' book. It's possible, but I think unlikely. Why? Because the story is ruined by the concession that it is partly fictitious (but which parts?). If the whole thing were a put-up job you would hardly admit this in part. Several reproductions of the article at the time do drop this let-down element ("The Illustrated Police News" for one). So, does that disprove Simon's opinion? Not at all. But it is why, until other clarifying sources appear -- as I believe they have but cannot show yet -- I subscribe to the opinion that I have already outlined in my book: the Vicar is real and he is writing about Druitt in disguise (as does Griffiths, Sims and Logan). Despite what I claim to have found, could I still be wrong and Simon correct? Of course, I often am wrong (and have never claimed to be an especially bright or clever person, and certainly not a 'sleuth', but you get up in the morning and you put one sock on at a time, and, you know, get on with it).

Sorry if you feel I have lectured at you, Simon.

David's manic debunking of myself, Simon, Wolf, Michael and Roger Palmer (who's next?) and the inappropriate and creepy use of message board comments has an extremely youthful pathology to it (the very title of one of his pieces, "The Suckered Trilogy", is particularly juvenile) but we all seem to have been attacked in the same way (very personally, e.g. as Don Quixote-style fools) but from the margins rather than at the center. Oh well, any over-excited pup can nip at your heels, it's not a big deal.

In his previous post David writes that he is not criticizing my work, just my arguments. First of all he can criticize my book all he likes. Secondly the book is an argument.

Life is short and the world can be very beautiful.

wow. delusions of grandeur much?
again, cant and wont reply with anything of substance against Davids counterpoints. Instead a general rant.

you don't have the balls to even try.

Life is short and the world can be very beautiful

then go out and experience it instead of spending all your time and obsessing on possibly the most convoluted crackpot theory in all of Ripperology.

talk about creepy.