Reasons why?

[Herlock Sholmes]

As we can see from his memoirs Macnaghten specifically says:

“Students of history, however, are aware that an excessive indulgence in vice leads, in certain cases, to a craving for blood.”

And as we don’t know the content of his private information we cannot make an informed deduction. Only speculation remains to us. Maybe it was discovered that Druitt had been associating with prostitutes (excessive indulgence in vice) Maybe someone had detected an unhealthy interest in blood and gore? Again, we can’t dismiss an unknown until we know what it is.

The fact is that Macnaghten did use the phrase and he clearly, for reasons unknown to us, suspected Druitt. We cannot prove or disprove the validity of this though. We can look at any statement in any case a begin a futile exercise in reading between the lines. In scrutinising every single word or every throwaway phrase in the light of our own individual assessments and interpretations and we can all be right or wrong; near the truth or miles off but we still come back to the same unavoidable point. That we simply don’t know.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

. . . there was every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts about him. He was . . . a doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be insane . . . and he disappeared immediately after the last murder, that in Miller’s Court on the 9th of November 1888.

(Mysteries of Police and Crime, Major Arthur Griffiths, 1898)


Where could Griffiths have obtained his information?

He makes the same mistakes as Macnaghten, writing incorrectly that Druitt was a doctor, and that Druitt disappeared at about the time of the last murder.

And whereas Macnaghten records that he was alleged to be sexually insane, Griffiths writes that he was believed to be insane.

Griffiths was a personal friend of Macnaghten.



. . . the body of the man suspected by the chiefs at the Yard, and by his own friends, who were in communication with the Yard, was found in the Thames.

(George R. Sims, 5 April 1903)


Where did Sims get the idea that Druitt was suspected by his own friends?

Is it no more than a coincidence that Griffiths made the same claim and that both Sims and Griffiths were personal friends of Macnaghten?

Does that not suggest that Macnaghten told them that Druitt was suspected by his friends (not relatives)?

And where did Sims get the idea that Druitt was suspected by the chiefs at Scotland Yard, if not from Macnaghten?



Mr M J Druitt a doctor of about forty-one years of age and of fairly good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller’s Court murder, and whose body was found floating in the Thames . . .

From private information I have little doubt but that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was sexually insane.

(Macnaghten Memorandum, Aberconway version)


Why did Macnaghten, in the final version, omit the reference to Druitt's alleged sexual insanity being an allegation, and instead record it as fact?

Is that not obviously an example of overstatement?



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 ...

(Macnaghten, Days of My Years,1914)


Macnaghten still backdating Druitt's suicide by about three and a half weeks to a date that connects it more obviously with the murders.


Déjà vu.

Reading the various versions of Macnaghten's story about Druitt is very much like reading the various versions of Anderson's fairy tale about 'Kosminski'.

They are pure fiction.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Has anyone ever suggested that Griffiths or Sims got their information independently of Macnaghten? I wasn’t aware of it if they had. Why then should we be surprised if any minor factual errors are repeated?

Fiction can be claimed as an opinion but certainly not as a fact. For me personally Druitt is the most interesting of the named suspects. These days when many suspects can be named almost entirely because they were alive at the time and might have had a slightly troubled background, Druitt has far more points of interest from which implications might be suggested. Debatable points certainly but points nonetheless. Why ignore them even if there’s only a small percentage chance of there being something there? I remain, as I have been for years, baffled.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Just a quick question , wasn't some connection made between MM, and or Sims, Griffiths with the Blackheath school a while back ? Just wondering if the allegation of sexual insanity came from said connection .

Regards Darryl

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just a quick question , wasn't some connection made between MM, and or Sims, Griffiths with the Blackheath school a while back ? Just wondering if the allegation of sexual insanity came from said connection .

Regards Darryl

Hi Darryl,

Was it this?


The Referee - Sunday 24 August 1913

MUSTARD AND CRESS

I have been reading with great interest Mrs Belloc Lowndes’s thrilling story of “The Lodger,” which is appearing in the Daily Telegraph. The story of “The Avenger” suggests the adventures of Jack the Ripper, and the reader, as he follows the narrative, finds himself wondering if “The Lodger” may not himself be the mysterious woman-killer who is being so diligently searched for by the police.

I am not going to make any comment on the remarkable sensation story the gifted authoress has founded on the mystery of the maniac who has been handed down to infamy as Jack the Ripper.

The Real Jack WAS a Lodger

during the whole of the time he was committing his crimes, and the house in which he lodged was in the neighbourhood of Blackheath. It was after his last maniacal murder in Miller’s –court that he disappeared from his lodgings. His body was found a month later in the Thames, and the probability is that he flung himself into the river a few hours after committing his last crime.

But it is not to revive the old controversy as to the identity of Jack that I am now referring to Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’s remarkable story. I refer to it because it has recalled to my memory a strange experience of my own. Somewhere among my papers I have an astounding document signed by the lady in whose house a man whom she firmly believed to be Jack had lodged. He had come to her house very much as the mysterious “Lodger” in the Telegraph serial comes to Mrs. Bunting. He was supposed to be a medical student. The odd thing about him was that he went out very little in the daytime, but frequently went out late at night, and always carried a small black bag.

He was rather a prepossessing-looking man, appeared to have plenty of money for his modest needs, and made himself agreeable to the members of the family. He made himself so agreeable that he landlady’s niece, who lived with her, did not feel annoyed when the lodger confessed that

He Was In Love With Her

The landlady’s husband was a foreigner. He was a professor of languages and held an official position at a public institution. When he heard that the lodger was paying attentions to his niece he was annoyed. “I didn’t like the man,” he said, “and we knew nothing of him beyond the fact that his reference was a doctor in whose house he had lodged before he came to us.” The professor was so annoyed that he ordered his niece to have nothing to do with the young man, and sent her away to a relation in the country. He also insisted upon his wife giving the lodger a fortnight’s notice. The lodger was annoyed and upset and received his dismissal with a bad brace.

That night the lodger went out soon after ten. The landlady saw him leave the house with his black bag. At three o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the noise of the front door closing. She struck a light and opened her bedroom door a little way and looked out. She saw the lodger coming up the stairs. He was in a state of great excitement, his face was marked with deep scratches, and he looked like a man who had been having an awful struggle with someone. “I’ve been attacked by thieves,” he said, when he saw the landlady looking at him. “Two men and a woman set about me in a dark corner of a street, and I had to run for my life.” Then he went to his bedroom.

About ten o’clock the next morning his landlady heard the lodger go to the bathroom, and she took that opportunity to go into her lodger’s bedroom and have a look round. He had lighted a fire himself, and on the hearth she saw

The Remains of Burnt Linen

The bag was on a chair by the side of the bed. She opened it, and in it she saw a long and curiously shaped knife.

The landlady was so alarmed that she went off at once to the institution at which her husband was engaged. On her way she caught sight of the newspaper placards. Two women had been found in the early hours of the morning murdered and mutilated in a way which left no doubt that the murderer was Jack the Ripper. She told the story of her discovery in the lodger’s room to the professor, who returned at once with her to the house to make a personal investigation before communicating with the police. When they reached the house the lodger had taken his belongings and had gone. He had left a fortnight’s rent, and a short note: “As I do not care to remain with you ‘under notice’ I have thought it better to leave at once.”

The professor hurried off to the police-station and told his story. Every search was made for the missing lodger, but without success, and shortly afterwards another murder was committed. Then came the last in Miller’s-court, and after that the information in the possession of Scotland Yard left very little doubt in the official mind as to

Who Jack Really Was

He committed suicide while the police were looking for him, and the finding of his body in the Thames put an end to all further official search for him. The real Jack was an insane doctor named D*****, who had been in a lunatic asylum and had escaped. He was a homicidal maniac whose friends, alarmed at his disappearance, had communicated with Scotland Yard and given a full description of him.

Several women in Whitechapel, of the class Jack selected his victims from, when shown the photograph the friends left with the police, declared that it was exactly like a man whom they had seen about in the neighbourhood on the nights the crimes had been committed. Two of them declared that he had spoken to them. The body of the man was found in the Thames a month after the murderer’s last crime. And the body had been a month in the water.

It was when these facts came to my knowledge that I put away the document the landlady of the mysterious lodger had left with me. I accepted, as everybody who knew the facts has accepted, the police theory that

Jack Had Been Identified,

and there was no useful purpose to be served in following up any other “clue.” The “revelation” made to me by the landlady who thought she had had Jack beneath her roof was brought vividly to my mind by the thrilling story of “The Lodger” in the Daily Telegraph

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

What we do have though is Farquharson telling people, 5 years before the Memorandum, that the ripper was the son of a surgeon that committed suicide. Yes, he said that the killer committed suicide on the night of the last murder, but the main point is that no other son of a surgeon committed suicide just after the Kelly murder. Farquaharsen was from the same area as the Druitt’s. Others favoured Druitt too. Where they all liars or where they all gullible or did they know something that we don’t?

It was actually three years, to the month.

They were not all liars, but they were all repeating the same tall story.

during the whole of the time he was committing his crimes, and the house in which he lodged was in the neighbourhood of Blackheath. It was after his last maniacal murder in Miller’s–court that he disappeared from his lodgings. His body was found a month later in the Thames, and the probability is that he flung himself into the river a few hours after committing his last crime.

Sims repeating the same tall story.

Has anyone ever suggested that Griffiths or Sims got their information independently of Macnaghten? I wasn’t aware of it if they had. Why then should we be surprised if any minor factual errors are repeated?

Of course not!

They were repeating the same tall story.

The repetition by various people of a certain story, with minor differences, does not mean they are confirming that anything in the original story was true.

All it means is that certain people heard the story and repeated it.

They are not separate sources of the same information.

There is only one source and it is Macnaghten's imagination.

A similar process can be seen in the Polish Jew/Kosminski fable.

People think there must be something in it because it is mentioned by Anderson, Macnaghten and Swanson, and that Anderson and Swanson had information of their own.

All that really happened is that Anderson developed a story told by Macnaghten and then embellished it further, making changes, and passed on the new version of the story to Swanson, who repeated it in his Marginalia.

The starting point of the myth told by Anderson, and later Swanson, is the mistake made by Macnaghten about the date of Kosminski's confinement.

The thing people miss is that Anderson and Macnaghten made the same mistake about Kosminski's incarceration taking place soon after the last murder and, furthermore, that they could hardly have made the same mistake independently.


P.S. Swanson, naturally, made the same mistake.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It was actually three years, to the month.

They were not all liars, but they were all repeating the same tall story.






Sims repeating the same tall story.






Of course not!

They were repeating the same tall story.

The repetition by various people of a certain story, with minor differences, does not mean they are confirming that anything in the original story was true.

All it means is that certain people heard the story and repeated it.

They are not separate sources of the same information.

There is only one source and it is Macnaghten's imagination.

A similar process can be seen in the Polish Jew/Kosminski fable.

People think there must be something in it because it is mentioned by Anderson, Macnaghten and Swanson, and that Anderson and Swanson had information of their own.

All that really happened is that Anderson developed a story told by Macnaghten and then embellished it further, making changes, and passed on the new version of the story to Swanson, who repeated it in his Marginalia.

The starting point of the myth told by Anderson, and later Swanson, is the mistake made by Macnaghten about the date of Kosminski's confinement.

The thing people miss is that Anderson and Macnaghten made the same mistake about Kosminski's incarceration taking place soon after the last murder and, furthermore, that they could hardly have made the same mistake independently.


P.S. Swanson, naturally, made the same mistake.

It was a tall story…..in your opinion.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

It was a tall story…..in your opinion.

No.

Two tall stories.

One by Macnaghten - Griffiths - Sims - Farquharson, and the other by

Macnaghten - Anderson - Swanson.


The very fact that two such stories exist should set alarm bells ringing.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That Macnaghten pulled Druitt’s name out of thin air doesn’t hold water.

1. He didn’t need to do it. He could have simply named the criminal Ostrog and the ‘lunatic’ Kosminski and left it at that. Nothing compelled him to produce a list of three.

2. If he wanted to make it a list of three he could have, with absolute ease, chosen someone more ‘convincing’ like a dead or permanently incarcerated lunatic or criminal?

3. If he was producing a memo to respond to the suggestion that Cutbush was the ripper, and he was willing to lie to do it, why did he simply load up the false evidence against Kosminski? (His family suspected him….he returned home on the night of one murder with blood on him…a bloody knife found etc?) Job done.

4. Why pick such a seemingly unlikely suspect with no criminal background or history of violence?

5. Why pick a person for whom there was a greater chance of an alibi being discovered?

6. If the name had got out why risk possible legal action?

7. Why pick someone who was related by marriage to one of his best friends? A man of that class and a member of the MCC (Mac was a huge cricket fan) Potentially ruining a family’s reputation at a time when those things were of paramount importance.

8. Why pick a ‘suspect’ who was dead when Mackenzie was killed when many, including his friend Munro, felt that she was also a victim?

9. Why would he have remembered a suicide that occurred six years previously and that had caused barely a ripple in the press?

10. If he, or a subordinate had alighted on Druitt after research, then they would have had the information in front of them. How could he therefore have got his age and occupation wrong?


It would be like a police officer say that he could name three suspects that were more likely to have been Bible John than John Irvine McInnes. Angus Sinclair, Peter Tobin and Billy Connolly!

I’ve no doubt that the police occasionally ‘fitted up’ someone to get a result but they didn’t ’fit up’ people like Druitt.


The suggestion just makes no sense.

[Herlock Sholmes]

No.

Two tall stories.

One by Macnaghten - Griffiths - Sims - Farquharson, and the other by

Macnaghten - Anderson - Swanson.


The very fact that two such stories exist should set alarm bells ringing.

We have no evidence that they were tall stories.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

We have no evidence that they were tall stories.

A Polish Jew, who was several years younger than any man ever reported to have been seen with any of the victims, committing the only Sabbath-day murder in the series on the holiest Sabbath in the Jewish calendar, being reported years later to have been a leading suspect in the case, even though the police at the time suspected that the murderer was a Gentile, and referred to by Anderson as 'the murderer' even though no charges were ever brought against him.

A man whose guilt is stated by Anderson to be a 'definitely ascertained fact', even though neither Anderson nor anyone else ever reported that he was ever questioned, let alone that an iota of incriminating evidence against him was ever found, or that any distinguishing physical characteristic of his identified.

A case in which Anderson claimed that the breakthrough came when he was able to deduce the religion and ethnicity of the suspect from a house-to-house search which he himself admitted yielded no clues.

A case in which the suspect is alleged by one policeman to have been watched round the clock by CID, even though according to another, he was in an asylum at the time, and even though the acting head of CID knew nothing about any surveillance of him.

The only case in British criminal history in which leading policemen claimed that a murderer was identified by an unnamed witness in the presence of unnamed and unidentifiable police witnesses and then permitted to go home or, alternatively, remain in an asylum, having been identified at a convalescence home that did not open until about two years later.


What would you call that, other than a tall story?

And just a reminder that Anderson claimed about two separate murder cases that, in both cases, the murderer was a Jew and that in both cases, Polish Jewish witnesses refused to cooperate with the police, even though in both cases the best eyewitness evidence was that the murderer had fair hair.


What would you call that, other than a tall story?


P.S. The Druitt tall story to follow shortly.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Hi Darryl,

Was it this?


The Referee - Sunday 24 August 1913

MUSTARD AND CRESS

I have been reading with great interest Mrs Belloc Lowndes’s thrilling story of “The Lodger,” which is appearing in the Daily Telegraph. The story of “The Avenger” suggests the adventures of Jack the Ripper, and the reader, as he follows the narrative, finds himself wondering if “The Lodger” may not himself be the mysterious woman-killer who is being so diligently searched for by the police.

I am not going to make any comment on the remarkable sensation story the gifted authoress has founded on the mystery of the maniac who has been handed down to infamy as Jack the Ripper.

The Real Jack WAS a Lodger

during the whole of the time he was committing his crimes, and the house in which he lodged was in the neighbourhood of Blackheath. It was after his last maniacal murder in Miller’s –court that he disappeared from his lodgings. His body was found a month later in the Thames, and the probability is that he flung himself into the river a few hours after committing his last crime.

But it is not to revive the old controversy as to the identity of Jack that I am now referring to Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’s remarkable story. I refer to it because it has recalled to my memory a strange experience of my own. Somewhere among my papers I have an astounding document signed by the lady in whose house a man whom she firmly believed to be Jack had lodged. He had come to her house very much as the mysterious “Lodger” in the Telegraph serial comes to Mrs. Bunting. He was supposed to be a medical student. The odd thing about him was that he went out very little in the daytime, but frequently went out late at night, and always carried a small black bag.

He was rather a prepossessing-looking man, appeared to have plenty of money for his modest needs, and made himself agreeable to the members of the family. He made himself so agreeable that he landlady’s niece, who lived with her, did not feel annoyed when the lodger confessed that

He Was In Love With Her

The landlady’s husband was a foreigner. He was a professor of languages and held an official position at a public institution. When he heard that the lodger was paying attentions to his niece he was annoyed. “I didn’t like the man,” he said, “and we knew nothing of him beyond the fact that his reference was a doctor in whose house he had lodged before he came to us.” The professor was so annoyed that he ordered his niece to have nothing to do with the young man, and sent her away to a relation in the country. He also insisted upon his wife giving the lodger a fortnight’s notice. The lodger was annoyed and upset and received his dismissal with a bad brace.

That night the lodger went out soon after ten. The landlady saw him leave the house with his black bag. At three o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the noise of the front door closing. She struck a light and opened her bedroom door a little way and looked out. She saw the lodger coming up the stairs. He was in a state of great excitement, his face was marked with deep scratches, and he looked like a man who had been having an awful struggle with someone. “I’ve been attacked by thieves,” he said, when he saw the landlady looking at him. “Two men and a woman set about me in a dark corner of a street, and I had to run for my life.” Then he went to his bedroom.

About ten o’clock the next morning his landlady heard the lodger go to the bathroom, and she took that opportunity to go into her lodger’s bedroom and have a look round. He had lighted a fire himself, and on the hearth she saw

The Remains of Burnt Linen

The bag was on a chair by the side of the bed. She opened it, and in it she saw a long and curiously shaped knife.

The landlady was so alarmed that she went off at once to the institution at which her husband was engaged. On her way she caught sight of the newspaper placards. Two women had been found in the early hours of the morning murdered and mutilated in a way which left no doubt that the murderer was Jack the Ripper. She told the story of her discovery in the lodger’s room to the professor, who returned at once with her to the house to make a personal investigation before communicating with the police. When they reached the house the lodger had taken his belongings and had gone. He had left a fortnight’s rent, and a short note: “As I do not care to remain with you ‘under notice’ I have thought it better to leave at once.”

The professor hurried off to the police-station and told his story. Every search was made for the missing lodger, but without success, and shortly afterwards another murder was committed. Then came the last in Miller’s-court, and after that the information in the possession of Scotland Yard left very little doubt in the official mind as to

Who Jack Really Was

He committed suicide while the police were looking for him, and the finding of his body in the Thames put an end to all further official search for him. The real Jack was an insane doctor named D*****, who had been in a lunatic asylum and had escaped. He was a homicidal maniac whose friends, alarmed at his disappearance, had communicated with Scotland Yard and given a full description of him.

Several women in Whitechapel, of the class Jack selected his victims from, when shown the photograph the friends left with the police, declared that it was exactly like a man whom they had seen about in the neighbourhood on the nights the crimes had been committed. Two of them declared that he had spoken to them. The body of the man was found in the Thames a month after the murderer’s last crime. And the body had been a month in the water.

It was when these facts came to my knowledge that I put away the document the landlady of the mysterious lodger had left with me. I accepted, as everybody who knew the facts has accepted, the police theory that

Jack Had Been Identified,

and there was no useful purpose to be served in following up any other “clue.” The “revelation” made to me by the landlady who thought she had had Jack beneath her roof was brought vividly to my mind by the thrilling story of “The Lodger” in the Daily Telegraph

Thank you Herlock . Not sure. There is something in the back of my head about a post [ maybe on the other site ], where it was speculated MM had some connection to Druitt's school, even if it was tenuous.

Regards Darryl

[Darryl Kenyon]

An official report being a tall story ?? Doesn't seem likely to me . Lets look at one sentence -
With regard to the double murder which took place on 30th September, there is no doubt but that the man was disturbed by some Jews who drove up to a Club, (close to which the body of Elizabeth Stride was found) and that he then, 'mordum satiatus', went in search of a further victim who he found at Mitre Square.

Is this a tall story ? Or is there some truth in what was thought ? IE - The killer was disturbed when killing Liz .
But we also know he wasn't disturbed by some Jews driving up to the club. So does that make it a tall story ? Or is it a case of before the info super highway [ so to speak ] , MM just got some of his facts mixed through, possibly memory . So bearing that in mind do we believe that he just invented the whole shebang about three people who were more likely to have been the murderer than Cutbush [ in his mind ] or not.

Regards Darryl

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

So does that make it a tall story ? Or is it a case of before the info super highway [ so to speak ] , MM just got some of his facts mixed through, possibly memory .

I did not say that Macnaghten could not have made genuine mistakes.

I would, however, suggest that when he backdated Kosminski's confinement in an asylum by nearly two years, and Druitt's suicide by three weeks, so that both events are conveniently closer to the time of what he himself regarded as the last murder, those are not genuine mistakes.

Similarly, Kosminski's strong homicidal tendencies and Druitt's sexual insanity, for which there is no evidence, make the cases against both men look stronger than they really are.

And if he was interested only in providing an unbiased report, why did he remove the word 'alleged', which appeared in his draft, so that it seemed that there was conclusive evidence that Druitt was insane?

And where could he possibly have heard that Kosminski had a great hatred of prostitutes, when there is no evidence that he even consorted with them, and when even Swanson, who claimed that he was under CID surveillance, mentions no evidence from that surveillance of any such contact, and when both Anderson and Smith were evidently unaware of any such surveillance having taken place?

And why did two confidants of Macnaghten's record that it was friends who suspected Druitt, whereas Macnaghten himself had indicated that it was relatives?

And why did they record that Druitt too was suspected by the police when he was still alive, when he evidently was not?

As with Anderson's fairytale, Macnaghten's story about Druitt was repeatedly spiced up.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Why would he have remembered a suicide that occurred six years previously and that had caused barely a ripple in the press?

Why remember Kosminski, when the only ripple he caused in the press was to cause laughter in court when he said:

I goes by the name of Abrahams sometimes, because Kosmunski is hard to spell

especially when there was no evidence whatsoever that he had committed any offence more serious than walking a dog in public without a muzzle?