Does anyone believe MJD was murdered?

[spyglass]

Sorry Folks!
Suicide does'nt wash with me, it has been pointed out many times before Im sure, but you dont go somewhere to die with a return ticket, and if you intend to drown yourself and you live in Blackheath, you can easily walk to the Thames from there. ( I know..I used to live there ) and finally why not just throw yourself in front of a train instead of catching one.

Unstable mind or not it just does'nt make sense to me.

[Johnr]

Unstable mind or not it just does'nt make sense to me.

Hello Spyglass,

Your quote above would have to be the classic of all times!

I laughed my head orf!

I think your quote answers your question, don't you?

If MJD went off his rocker, taking his return ticket and dressing up smartly
would not have had to make sense. Just like wading into the river in your smart clothes with big rocks in your pocket.

Also, I think people often top themselves when they are on a high. (Money in his kick. Kid gloves on the fingers. Just won a big case...).

I'm no expert. I assume people can have success in their business life, yet regard themselves as a failure in the human relationships department.

People close to those who suddenly suicide are often the most shocked: "He had so much to live for" they say.JOHN RUFFELS.

[MrTwibbs]

Sorry Folks!
Suicide does'nt wash with me, it has been pointed out many times before Im sure, but you dont go somewhere to die with a return ticket, and if you intend to drown yourself and you live in Blackheath, you can easily walk to the Thames from there. ( I know..I used to live there ) and finally why not just throw yourself in front of a train instead of catching one.

Unstable mind or not it just does'nt make sense to me.

It does make sense to me and I think it is because I have empathy with suidical behaviour and depression.
The method of suicide whether it be gassing oneself via exhaust pipe in an enclosed garage, jumping off a bridge, drowning or throwing oneself in front of a train is dependent on the person. Usually before the suicide the person will fantasize about the best way to go, acting it out in their mind, going through the time, the place and possibly even rationalising it as the most dignified most subtle way to go. I think drowning fits in with what we know of druitt's personality. He was not extravagent nor boastful but very workman like, keen eye for detail and was a bit of a worrier.
Druitt bought a return ticket but perhaps at the point he was not thinking, perhaps he was in auto pilot mode and was simply doing what he'd done everyday during his commute.
Or at the moment he bought the ticket, perhaps he held out some semblance of holding onto life, giving it one more chance, waiting for that golden moment where things would change and they didn't.

[Jonathan H]

I think that Druitt might have been trying to appear to have gone abroad, not taken his own life -- hence weighting his body with rocks.

The argument against this is the brother supposedly finding a suicide note apparently addressed to George Valentine, amongst Montie's effects at the Blackheath School.

I subscribe to the theory [it's my own] that Druitt confessed to an Anglican minister between the murder of Mary Kelly and his own self-murder, which meant he faced either the madhouse or the gallows, eg. Since Friday I feared going like mother, Friday being when he coughed up to a churchman. He feared going into the living deatn of a mental institution, plus the inevitable disgrace to his family. He chose to kill himself in as discreet a way as possible.

Since the 'belief' in his dual identity apparently originates with Druitt's own family there must have been something for the family, or brother, to find?

The detail about 'blood-stained clothes' is the only one that Macnaghten never utilises from the MP story. It maybe a journalistic concoction. On the other hand, it might be a glimpse into what on earth made the family think the unthinkable?

The 'West of England MP' story does not mention the Thames drowning, presumably one of the details which are too specific -- potentially triggering a libel action -- and so the impression is given that on the night of the last murder this surgeon's son was found dead by his own hand, wearing blood-stained clothes [The later, 'Drowned Dcotor' mythos will include the Thames detail, but alter the other elements of the tale to avoid libel action, eg. a surgeon himself rather than a surgeon's son].

But Druitt did not kill himself on the night of the Kelly murder, and would, in fact, be found at the end of December in water-logged attire.

So these blood-stained clothes, if they existed, must have been found seperate to his corpse being recovered.

In Sims' mythological version of all this, the 'friends' of the doctor already suspect their pal of being the fiend before he vanishes. They contact police, who supposedly already know that 'Dr D' is the killer, being so super-efficient. All myth as Macnaghten conceded in his memoirs.

Yet if you compare the myth with the bits and pieces we have -- just scraps really -- then possibly what happened is that the brother found bloody clothes amongst Montie's possessions after the Kelly murder, but before the latter took his own life. After his suicide, a note was found to the headmaster and this was used at the inquiry, or the brother made it up [but surely Valentime must have been familiar with Montie's handwriting].

At some point, either before or after the inquiry, a cleric stepped froward and told the appalled family about the confession. Two years later the secret leaked to the neighbour-politician, Henry Farquharson, who was contacted by Macnaghten in the aftermath of the Coles/Sadler debacle. The police chief then interviewed the family, or a family member -- eg. William -- and so in that sense Scotland Yard, or rather this lone top cop already knew about Montie's guilt before he spoke with the 'pals', actually the killer's family.

But there was a diabolical time-bomb waiting to go off. The cleric, for some reason, was going to broadcast the confession on the tenth anniversay of the murderer's death. This is the factor which preyed upon Macnaghtne's mind. After all, the easiest thing to do was ... nothing, about such an embarassing too-late suspect, one unknown to police -- unknown that he had been dead for years and they had been chasing a phantom.

Nevertheless, to head off the cleric, who passed the story onto a North Country Vicar with instructions to publish, Macnaghten moved to activate a pair of literary cronies to quash the revelation. It worked. It hinged on the Vicar's candid admission that his version of the un-named Druitt story -- if it is Druitt? -- was admittedly 'substantial truth in fictitious form', and thus dismissed as a minor, eccentric sideshow. In fact, his story was not published.

What the press and public -- and probably Griffiths and Sims too -- did not not realise is that the 'Drowned Doctor', which trumped the Vicar's 'at one time a surgeon' is also semi-fictional, even more so, arguably, than the Vicar's account.

But Macnaghten's memoirs show that he did know.

The Vicar's story of Jan 1899 was crushed in a pincer movement between Major Griffiths, whose book came out in 1898 claiming that the police practically knew that the Ripper was a suicided doctor, and then afterwards by Sims, now doing an extraordinary about-face; trumpeting the super-efficient Yard and writing that the Vicar [whose story he unfairly distorts] could not have heard the fiend's dying confession because Jack killed himself within hours of the Kelly murder. Moreover, Sims will claim that the police were on the verge of arresting the doctor, whereas the Vicar's story tallies with what we know about the real Druitt; he killed himself weeks later, thus plenty of time to confess, and he was not on police radar at all.

[caz]

...if you intend to drown yourself and you live in Blackheath, you can easily walk to the Thames from there. ( I know..I used to live there )

I'd wager you didn't live there back in the 1880s, spyglass, or you'd have a good idea why a fastidious Monty, regardless of how depressed he was, might not have fancied tossing himself into the Thames that far east, where the water would have been considerably more polluted than at leafy Chiswick.

The perishing cold December water would have made him suffer enough, let alone mouthfuls of God knows what.

Love,

Caz
X

[spyglass]

Hi Caz!
Im not quite sure what point your making or if it is tonge in cheek, but your argument tends to lean to you thinking that MJT was indeed of sound mind when he ventured out that December morning.
I am not an expert on insanity, and it is likely that he did finish his own life,
It's just that I have doubts about it, and I agree with an earlier post who said " when in the water..life saving instinct would kick in."

[Johnr]

A Bit Over the top ,sorry Spyglass.

Hello Spyglass,
On re-reading my post about your quote, whilst I stand by my reasoning, I think I might have offended you a bit with my exuberance. Sorry.
And I do agree with you that MJD could just as easily have committed suicide by drowning at Blackheath.

Maybe he wanted to get the most out of his season ticket, :-) ...

or catered for a change of plan.

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Errata]

A few points to consider in your deliberations.

1: The absolutely insane tend not to kill themselves. They have no idea their delusions are false, and do not see how their behavior hurts others. Unless they hallucinate Jesus Christ telling them to stuff bricks in their coat and swim to the bottom of the Thames or some such, they aren't going to commit suicide.

2: Perfectly sane people commit suicide all the time. Suicide is not about illness, it's about hope. If you have none, you might kill yourself. If you have even a glimmer, you won't.

4: People committing suicide often engage in contradicting behavior. Sometimes to avoid drawing attention to their plan, sometimes because it's something they always do and it didn't occur to them to NOT do it, sometimes because they are hoping for a miracle. My friend was going to kill herself. Quit her job, gave her dog away, the whole thing. She cocks the gun, puts it to her head and the phone rings. She answers it. It was someone worried about her who wanted to come over. It saved her life. She really planned on doing it. She loved that dog. So why did she answer the phone? It didn't occur to her to not answer. Why did he buy a return ticket? Maybe he always bought a return ticket.

5: The survival instinct is only so useful. And it never kicks in when it would really be effective. Like, before you go bunjee jumping. And it can easily be overridden. There are stories of shipwreck victims deliberately inhaling water to avoid a longer slower death. Weighting pockets is not to weigh you down so you can't come up for air, it's to allow you to submerge so deeply and so quickly that by the time you are fighting to rise, you won't make it to the top in time. Works better in the ocean, but so be it. The actual "body kicks brain aside fight to live" instinct doesn't kick in until death is imminent. Especially in drowning. It's well after you have held your breath for a long time. It starts about one second before you are in fact GOING to inhale. And by the time you inhale, no matter what you do you're dead. So if you can't get the coat with the bricks off and swim to the surface in about 1 second, the bricks have done their job.

[Jonathan H]

Druitt probably killed himself because he was Jack the Ripper.

Therefore, the net was closing.

Whether this was an internal one or an external one, it was not a police net, and this inadvertently created 'Ripperology'.

[caz]

Many thanks, Errata, for injecting some common sense.

Hi Caz!
Im not quite sure what point your making or if it is tonge in cheek...

And I do agree with you that MJD could just as easily have committed suicide by drowning at Blackheath.

And the Thames is meant to be liquid history.

I give up.

Just read Errata's post and reconcile that with Monty choosing to vomit and choke his way to eternity, on industrial and human waste in the eastern Thames, when Chiswick much further to the west allowed him to sink quickly and cleanly into blessed oblivion.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

While we're being morbid, my late brother-in-law fell into a canal in Dublin (in comparison, the Thames is a babbling brook) when he was a teenager, and was fished out unconscious and brought round by someone thumping his chest. He said that the experience of drowning was not at all unpleasant, that he could hear what he described as music, and that it was just like going to sleep. So maybe poor Monty's exit from this planet wasn't too traumatic. Of course, being a gentleman and a toff, he wasn't going out covered in sh*t from the riff-raff - Chiswick sh*t was altogether more acceptable.

Graham

[caz]

Absolutely, old sport. It beats me how anyone thinks it could have made no difference to one's drowning experience, in that river and at that time in its history. The point is, every Londoner's sh*t from royalty downwards was sent into the Thames a lot further east than where Monty chose to take his last drink.

Love,

Caz
X

[spyglass]

Hi JohnR,
No offence taken, I guess I should have worded it differently, reading it backI can see why you would have a laugh..glad I made your day.

CAZ,
Dont give up, I hurriedly read your post without taking it in properly but now I get you point.....HOWEVER..I do and always will do question the fact that MJT commited suicide.
I think most of us would agree that there is a difference between insanity, disturbed and not quite right in the mind.

[Errata]

Many thanks, Errata, for injecting some common sense.

Not so much common sense as much as experience. I've drowned three times. I remember once in the ocean, but evidently I drowned twice in the family swimming pool before the age of three, and if you think that doesn't make me question mom and dad's parenting skills...

I wonder if he had any affinity with the water. I do, which is really why I drowned so many times. I just was endlessly fascinated with it. When I need to think I go to a nearby boat launch at the river and just watch the water. Our local river is also highly disgusting downriver, so I go up river to sort stuff out. Maybe that's why he had a return ticket. He went out there to think, and decided to kill himself after arriving.

[m_w_r]

Maybe that's why he had a return ticket. He went out there to think, and decided to kill himself after arriving.

Yes, and then, deciding at the last minute to leave a suitable message for the living, he rose, dead, from his watery grave, crossed town again (without using his return ticket or attracting suspicion), wrote the note which was later found in his place of residence ("the best thing for me was to die" - past tense, you'll notice), went out again, crossed town without being observed, and crawled back into the Thames, from which he was pulled, still dead, some weeks later.

Perfect.

Regards,

Mark