Macnaghten's Daughter - "The Truth Could Make the Throne Totter"

[c.d.]

In reviewing the Swanson marginalia I stumbled upon this. The source is Wikipedia.

Of the three men suspected at the time of the murders, Macnaghten thought Druitt was the most likely but in 1972, two years before she died, Macnaghten's daughter told her friend Michael Thornton that in nominating Druitt her father was "only following the official line. The truth could make the throne totter." Thornton reported this in the Sunday Express in 1992.

Very interesting. I had never heard this before. Does anyone know anything about it?

"The throne totter" could probably be literally referring to the Royal Family or just an expression meaning it would be a great surprise with serious repercussions.

c.d.

[Pcdunn]

I have not heard about this, but it is certainly interesting. I will follow your lead and look up Wiki and the newspaper...

[c.d.]

I am quite surprised that there were 138 views on this but only one response.
Oh well. I can only run 'em up the flagpole, you decide whether or not you want to salute.

c.d.

[GUT]

I am quite surprised that there were 138 views on this but only one response.
Oh well. I can only run 'em up the flagpole, you decide whether or not you want to salute.

c.d.

I'd like to be able to read the full thing before I comment.

[Jonathan H]

There's nothing to it

[Paddy]

Hope you dont mind just a slight side step here ?
I was just reading an Article about Magnaghten in Sunday Post 15th May 1921.
In it it mentioned about his thoughts on the Ripper. It said he never claimed to have anything more than a shrewd idea. He denied the story that the man had been arrested and detained in a criminal lunatic asylum.
"The probability was" he said "the ripper was a maniac of a type known to criminologists, who lived with his own people and had comitted suicide on or about November 10th after he had knocked out a Commissioner of Police and very nearly settled the hash of one of his Majesty's Secreteries of States"

Have never read about this does anybody know what they are talking about? Or does he mean not literally ? I do tend to take everything literally I'm afraid.
Thanks
Pat...........................

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

By the time Lady Aberconway made her throne tottering remark, the rumour of the Duke of Clarence having been the Whitechapel murderer had been doing the rounds for at least ten years.

Regards,

Simon

[Joshua Rogan]

Hope you dont mind just a slight side step here ?
I was just reading an Article about Magnaghten in Sunday Post 15th May 1921.
In it it mentioned about his thoughts on the Ripper. It said he never claimed to have anything more than a shrewd idea. He denied the story that the man had been arrested and detained in a criminal lunatic asylum.
"The probability was" he said "the ripper was a maniac of a type known to criminologists, who lived with his own people and had comitted suicide on or about November 10th after he had knocked out a Commissioner of Police and very nearly settled the hash of one of his Majesty's Secreteries of States"

Have never read about this does anybody know what they are talking about?
Thanks
Pat...........................

Warren and Matthews?

[Paddy]

I cant believe I thought he meant actually knocked out....My husband jokes about my being like this.....Thanks Joshua.
Pat......

[Mayerling]

A bit of hyperbole in that statement in the 1921 article. Henry Matthews was too important (in a political sense) for Salisbury to sack him. Matthews was (I believe) the sole Catholic in the cabinet, and a well regarded (if not brilliant) lawyer for his handling of the cross-examination of Sir Charles Dilke in the Crawford Divorce Case of 1884. For his usefulness in satisfying the second largest religious group in the British Isles, and his better-than-average legal abilities, Matthews was not going to be thrown out no matter how many gruesome murders in the East End occurred. I also remind you that there had been several other occasions in his five years tenure as Home Secretary when (ordinarily) Salisbury might have replaced him.

1) The Cass Case about the police constable who mistakenly arrested and treated a woman as a prostitute (1887)
2) The Israel Lipsky Poisoning Trial Conviction Problem. (1887)
3) The Trafalgar Square Riots of 1887
4) Whitechapel
5) The death sentences on the two Davies Brothers for the murder of their drunken father (1889). One of the brothers was just the right age for execution while his brother was one year younger and got life imprison - and the two were protecting their mother from an abusive father.
6) The mishandling by Judge Fitzjames Stephens (same judge in the earlier Lipsky Case) in the trial and conviction of Florence Maybrick. (1889) Stephen's rambling summation to the jury is still a masterpiece of how to give a half-a**ed job in summation if one has just had a nervous breakdown or stroke. [Not know what the "Grand National" horse race is....BOY!]
7) Serious questions about how much the Home Office and Scotland Yard had cooperated in the attempt to remove Charles Parnell from Parliament, and in helping the plaintiff "Times of London" in the hearings and civil actions stemming from it's "Parnellism and Crime" series. (1887-1889).

In 1895 Salisbury returned to Downing Street, and in forming his next cabinet he did not put Matthews into it. But Matthews did get a Viscounty title for his services.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

The 1921 article is quoting Sir Melville Macnaghten's memoir chapter (4) "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper".

It can be found on this site. Here is the final climax:

"Only last autumn I was very much interested in a book entitled The Lodger, which set forth in vivid colours what the Whitechapel murderer's life might have been while dwelling in London lodgings. The talented authoress portrayed him as a religious enthusiast, gone crazy over the belief that he was predestined to slaughter a certain number of unfortunate women, and that he had been confined in a criminal lunatic asylum and had escaped therefrom. I do not think that there was anything of religious mania about the real Simon Pure, nor do I believe that he had ever been detained in an asylum, nor lived in lodgings. I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people ; that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888, after he had knocked out a Commissioner of Police and very nearly settled the hash of one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State."

The words about the Ripper being almost omnipotent against two officers of the state is how the chapter ends. It is purest hyperbole as Jeff wrote: Mathews could not be sacked without the government falling on the numbers and Warren did not resign over the Whitechapel murders, but over an indiscreet essay for a newspaper (that he did not concede was indiscreet).

Macnaghten despised Warren for blackballing him from joining the Yard until the Commissioner himself was out. I think Mac is therefore deliberately teasing Warren by having the Ripper maybe kill himself on Nov 10th 1888, because that is the very date that Warren's resignation to Matthews was accepted (it was sent on the 8th,m and on the 9th Mary Jane Kelly was killed, hence the popular perception that the Commissioner had resigned over the case.)

To Paddy

I quite understand why you made that erroneous interpretation, as Macnaghten writes cryptically and ambiguously in his memoir about the un-named Druitt.

I also subscribe to the theory that when Douglas G. Browne wrote his book on the history of the Yard, in 1956, he also mistook those lines for being literally true. Consequently he thought that Macnaghten was referring to an abortive attempt to kill the Home Sec, in 1888 by Irish terrorists -- and there was such a plot -- and wrote, wrongly, that Mac identified the leader of the terrorists with the Ripper.

[martin wilson]

It will require a decent researcher (not me) to look a little closer at the Majendie family.
I am having trouble trying to discover the familial relationship if any, between Vivian Majendie and Lewis Ashurst Majendie who married the daughter of the Earl of Crawford (who pops up in a dissertation about a possible source for Mcnaghten's 'family' member)
Lewis's daughter Aline was a Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria from 1894 to 1901.
JH is on to something here. Read more sympathetically.

[mpriestnall]

I have not heard about this, but it is certainly interesting. I will follow your lead and look up Wiki and the newspaper...

Hi Pcdunn,

I know it's some time ago now, but did you manage to find any more details from the newspaper?

I would like to see more of the original article from the Sunday Express in 1992.

I currently have a sub for FindMyPast but unfortunately access to the Sunday Express is not included.

Martyn

[mpriestnall]

There's nothing to it

To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, you would say that wouldn't you!

[Pcdunn]

Hi, Martyn,

I'm suspecting I forgot about checking, or didn't locate it. I'd forgotten about this thread, certainly! And due to real life, I'd been away from Casebook for awhile.

I no longer work at a library, but may be able to do some research and find that article. I'll try, anyway.