'M. J. Druitt- said to be a doctor'

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Jonathan

It's fine mate! For what it's worth I thought it was funny...but thereagain I've always had a schoolboy sense of humour!

All the best

Dave

[DVV]

I have always acknowledged that the
Anderson-Swanson-Kosminski theory, to put it crudely, is strong -- especially when you read Begg who considers all sources from all angles.

Hi Jonathan
that's worse than believing in Druitt, mind you.
(From someone who puts Begg above Sugden, if they are to be compared - as I believe)

[Jonathan H]

Oh no, DVV, there's nothing more despised than those few who believe in the Druitt-Farquharason-Macnaghten theory.

That other poster doesn't get it but there are real breakthroughs which can be made -- on a provisional basis -- if you compare and contrast all the available sources. That is how I noticed, albeit after years, what has seemingly not been noticed before, because Mac had been written off as a poorly informed primary source on Druitt.

For example, that Macnaghten knew (see Sims) that brother William was searching for missing Montie, a detail outside of PC Moulson's Report on the recovery of the body from the Thames, and that in 1913 and 1914 the retiring police chief pushed back the date of Druitt's suicide from a few hours after the final murder (Farquharson; Griffiths; Sims) to a day and a night, perhaps longer. Sims in 1907 had written that the 'mad doctor' could no longer function normally even for 'a single day' -- and now Mac had him doing exactly that. This suggests that Macnaghten is being more honest in the glare of the spotlight, as this aspect is closer to the known facts.

Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
4 June 1913

FATE OF JACK THE RIPPER

Retiring British Official Says Once Famous Criminal Committed Suicide
London Cable to the New York Tribune
The fact that "Jack the Ripper", the man who terrorized the East End of London by the murder of seven women during 1888, committed suicide, is now confirmed by Sir Melville Macnaughten, head of the criminal investigation department of Scotland Yard, who retired on Saturday after 24 years' service.

Sir Melville says:

"It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that "Jack the Ripper" committed suicide six months before I joined the force.

[That sounds like, to him at least, a definitely ascertained fact. Actually it is correct almost to the day of the real suicide date of Dec 2ndish 1888 to Mac joining the Force on June 1st 1889]

That remarkable man was one of the most fascinating of criminals. Of course, he was a maniac, but I have a very clear idea as to who he was and how he committed suicide, but that, with other secrets, will never be revealed by me."

Assuming they literally existed, and they may not have, what were the 'other secrets'? More to the point this comment means that what he has already just said -- at a well attended news conference -- was also a secret, eg. that the killer took his own life.

But ... this is a story Macnaghten has been peddling, albeit anonymously via writer chums from the Crimes Club -- eg. he could control them -- in enough detail for the murderer to be recognised by the respectable circles in which his family moved, since 1898.

Now here he is, in 1913, with nobody to hide behind, acting as the soul of propriety and discretion.

This paradox makes no sense to me unless Mac was confident that there was enough fiction-mixed-with fact to render Druitt in his cronies' accounts -- and Druitt's surviving relations -- to be safely hidden ('family' morphing into 'friends' is the most blatant example).

Or, as the North Country Vicar of 1899 puts it more candidly: 'substantial truth under fictitious form'. The same Vicar who claims that the murderer confessed all to an Anglican minister.

Was this the 'other secret'?

[Roy Corduroy]

Good evening Jonathan,

I believe I've said this before, but I like your theory. "Case Disguised." Because it adddresses the anomolies, or apparent mistakes by Macnaghten in a way not done before. Based on the latest information.

I understand what a Ripper suspect book or theory is. It's a mental exercise. What you have done it to reason how it might have happened. How Melville Macnaghten came to say what he did.

The real tipping point is, did Macnaghten actually know something about Montague Druitt's guilt. A solid lead he could rely on, such as from Mr. Lonsdale, or William Druitt, maybe passed through Farquharson. Or, did Macnaghten simply stick with this story once it came to his attention. He 'liked' this solution and purveyed it, in different forms, even though there was nothing of substance to back it up in reality.

You are suggesting Macnaghten did in fact have good information. And why not! Why argue the point if you don't believe it's a possibility.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Roy

And you maybe absolutely right too.

What might have happened is that a highly aritculate and charismatic figure, Druitt, may have become mentally unhinged -- and believed he was the fiend.

He confessed to Lonsadle who panicked when Druitt went missing, supposedly abroad. The brother found 'blood-stained clothes', there was no absolute alibi for five of the murders, and so a posthumous diagonsis of 'epileptic mania' was bestowed on his by his medico reltatives.

Except it does not exist.

Later, in Dorset, somebody told somebody they should not have and, in 1891, Farquharson picked up the story, the confession in words morphing into one in action, eg. the incriminating timing telecoped to a few hours.

Macnaghten, obessed with the case, and being a Super-sleuth, and acutely disappointed that Warren had prevented his appointment -- so he missed the first few murders -- meets with the MP, shuts him up, then meets with the brother and accepts the diagnosis.

Except that Mac was neither a doctor nor really a detective. He then keeps it to himself until the Cutbush near-affair forced him to give the Tories and the Yard some cover in the file in case others found the same tale he had (or rather reactivacted the MP's leak).

But they may have all committed themselves to a mirage because it was a delusion, The blood-stined clothes -- if they existed -- may have come from any number of non-sinister soruces, except to somebody losing their grip on reality yet appearing to be mostly functional and successful.

That may have been what made his confession so persuasive even to hear about it after his death. He's winning a case in court one day, playing cricket another, and then he tells Lonsdale that he is the fiend, that he has blackouts and he wakes up walking back from Whitechapel with blood stains, or whatever.

Whereas we know that verbal lucidity proves nothing about the truth of what mentally deranged person is saying, even to an ordained minister.

Whatever it was, the full story, the MP had only to confide it to other people and they too believed -- but that could have been due to a cultural medical ignorance-misconception about 'Protean' madness, a ghastly mistake which misled the family, the MP, and finally the police chief.