Montague John Druitt : Whitechapel Murderer ?

[Jonathan H]

There is no evidence, not even a hint, that Druitt was gay?

In fact the claim that he was even sacked from the Valentine School, whilst alive, is ambiguous at best.

He was a bachelor at a time when men of a certain class were marrying later -- and being married would not prove he was not homosexual anyhow? We know that he had considerable physical prowess as an accomplished athlete.

What we have from Macnagthen is that the Druitt family believed and/or suspected their deceased member of being a sexual sadist against women.

Furthermore, that they believed/suspected Montie of being the Ripper.

Whatever the strength or weakness of these indications of criminal behavior [long lost to us] they convinced the family, their MP and a police chief, and were later accepted by a Major, a playwright -- and possibly a Vicar too.

All were members of the 'better classes', and all were convinced of the guilt of a fellow alumni. Not what you would expect in terms of their class bias if there was, say, a handy foreign, poor suspect believed to be the Fiend, and believed to be more likely to be guilty by other senior policemen.

For years I could not really understand why a Blackheath school-master/barrister would seek victims so far away, and keep seeking them there after the East End was crawling with Bobbies? Why take the risk?

For me -- and I'm admittedly completely alone on this one -- this part of the puzzle was answered by Tom Cullen's breath-taking, Marxist-driven theory in his flawed but masterly 'Autumn of Terror' [1965]

[miss_anna]

There is no evidence, not even a hint, that Druitt was gay?

In fact the claim that he was even sacked from the Valentine School, whilst alive, is ambiguous at best.

He was a bachelor at a time when men of a certain class were marrying later -- and being married would not prove he was not homosexual anyhow? We know that he had considerable physical prowess as an accomplished athlete.

What we have from Macnagthen is that the Druitt family believed and/or suspected their deceased member of being a sexual sadist against women.

Furthermore, that they believed/suspected Montie of being the Ripper.

Whatever the strength or weakness of these indications of criminal behavior [long lost to us] they convinced the family, their MP and a police chief, and were later accepted by a Major, a playwright -- and possibly a Vicar too.

All were members of the 'better classes', and all were convinced of the guilt of a fellow alumni. Not what you would expect in terms of their class bias if there was, say, a handy foreign, poor suspect believed to be the Fiend, and believed to be more likely to be guilty by other senior policemen.

For years I could not really understand why a Blackheath school-master/barrister would seek victims so far away, and keep seeking them there after the East End was crawling with Bobbies? Why take the risk?

For me -- and I'm admittedly completely alone on this one -- this part of the puzzle was answered by Tom Cullen's breath-taking, Marxist-driven theory in his flawed but masterly 'Autumn of Terror' [1965]

We only know these claims from Macnaghten and we don't know how his questioning or interrogation of the family was carried out. Modern investigators are careful not to plant suggestions in the minds of those who may be a source of information. Abberline clearly scoffed at the idea of Druitt being a suspect and i could find the quote. Macnaghten also suspected 55 year old Ostrog, who was in a French prison at the time of the ripper murders. Sorry, but i don't share the reverence that some people have of Macnaghten's talents as a investigator.

[miss_anna]

Hi Anna

Whatever one makes of the phrase "sexually insane," this description of Druitt comes from Macnaghten and so has to be treated with a certain amount of caution. It's pot luck with Macnaghten.

I agree with you fully about Macnaghten. I think he was full of these Victorian era preconceptions and really missed the mark when trying to imagine what type of person the ripper could be. Serial killers are not suicidal in the form that Druitt was.

[Jonathan H]

Yes, Macnaghten may have have been wrong in his conclusions, for sure.

On the other hand, his memoirs dispense completely with [the un-named] Ostrog and Kosminski, and focus only on [the un-named] Druitt, about which he writes that the goods on this suspect only came to police attention [eg. himself] 'some years after' June 1889.

That's the critical revelation of his 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' in 1914. Druitt was not a contemporaneous suspect. He only came to Macnaghten's attention from between 1891 and 1894. That's the meaning of the title's chapter; the police were chasing a phantom about whose early demise they were ignorant of, and uninvolved with.

Abberline downplays, quite rightly, the suspect status of what he calls 'the young doctor' and the 'young medical student' in his ripostes to George Sims in 1903.

But this is unlikely to be Druitt as there was no reason Abberline had ever heard of him.

Understandably, he seems to be confusing the 'Drowned Doctor' of Sims with a third, missing medical student person-of-interest from 1888. In the same interview he talks about contacting the Police Commissioner, by then Macnaghten, to inform him of his theory, rapidly hardening into a certainty, that the Ripper was this wife-poisoner George Chapman.

What poor Abberline does not realize, and there is no reason why he should have, is that Macnaghten HIMSELF is the source for Sims about [the un-named] Druitt, and [the un-named] Kosminski.

Abberline thinks this 'Drowned Doctor' must be a journalistic fantasy because, as a key investigator in 1888, he was never in hot pursuit of an English doctor who vanished after the Kelly murder, whose friends were frantic about him being the Fiend, and who bobbed up in the Thames over a month later [it's a fantasy alright, although Sims didn't know it].

It's completely understandable from Abberline's point of view that he thinks Sims is talking out of his hat, in 'The Referee', because the famous writer had more than implied just such a monolithic police chase in 1888.

Sims' arrogant reply was that the 'Drowned Doctor' was the Super-suspect in a 'final' and 'conclusive' report to the Home Office. Again, the only suspect who makes any sense to Abberline is William Sanders, who was the subject of his own report to the Home Office -- which was hardly final nor conclusive.

We now know what neither man realized. They were both right, and they were both wrong.

Sanders, an insane medical student, was perhaps the only dodgy English medico that the police were in search of as a possible suspect for the Ripper.

Whilst Montie Druitt was the suspect whom Macnaghten, quite alone amongst senior police, was sure was the best bet to be the Ripper.

I think Macnaghten was playing a game which suckered both men.

That Report, an alleged 'draft', which Sims was privy to and now nicknamed the 'Aberconway Version', was not final or conclusive, at least in its bureaucratic status, and had never gone near the Home Office. But it did express Macnaghten's personal certainty about Druitt's guilt [Sims never even knew that it was not even a fair representation of the thrust of the original 1894 Report gathering dust in the Scotland Yard archives.]

As a source Abberline's 1903 interview arguably dovetails perfectly with Macnaghten's admission, in his memoir, confirming the [un-named] Druitt as the Super-suspect who dwarfs all others -- but a too-late suspect.

In a comparable way, Littlechild is doing the same dance in his letter to Sims. He has never heard of this English 'Dr D' who was supposedly hotly pursued by police in 1888. He does recall an American quack suspect, a strong candidate for the Ripper though not a sadist, who was 'believed' to have killed himself.

As an administrator and a propagandist, Macnaghten's mission was to bury the embarrassing fact that Druitt [and Kosminski] came to police attention only after the last Whitechapel murder, of Frances Coles in 1891, and he -- the eternal Etonian schoolboy -- did such a good job with his smoke-and-mirrors tricks that both Abberline and Sims were misled. [Macnaghten's pranks inadvertently mislead researchers to this day.]

Macnaghten's memoirs were a belated attempt, in retirement, to somewhat set the record straight for posterity.

Well, not nearly enough as it turns out.

That source, 'Days of My Years', remains ignored, or unread, or dismissed, or underappreciated by even some of the Big Guns of Ripperology -- and that included Cullen [Paul Begg and R J Palmer being notable exceptions]

[Jonathan H]

Just to be clear and specific in my counter-argument:

The Druitt's Tory MP, Henry Richard Farquharson, who probably suspected Druitt [suspected? It was his 'doctrine'!] is the first, early secondary source on Druitt ever discovered [in the early 90's, but the MP was only identified by Andy Spalleck in 2008] who believed that Montie was the Ripper.

A source which is independent of Macnaghten, and precedes the Macnaghten Report of Feb 1894.

Yes, Ostrog is a red herring. But he is Macnaghten's red herring.

In the 1894 version of his Report he had to put Anderson and Swanson's preferred 'suspect', Kosminski, along with the real Ripper, M J Druitt.

But exposing this significant division in CID could look very unimpressive to the Home Secretary, if he requested a briefing document?

So, Macnaghten added a third name, of a Russian swine whom he knew not to be a Ripper suspect at all, but who was a foreigner and a criminal and mad.

In this case 'two's a crowd' but three makes for a list.

[Uncle Jack]

Sorry, but I don't understand what "I personally see him as having an alibi" means.

Surely the matches either give him an alibi or they don't. And from the data in the public domain, they don't.

Perhaps you mean you personally find it difficult to imagine someone playing cricket a few hours after committing a murder, but that's very different from the matches giving him an alibi.

Hi Chris,

When I say personally, I mean that some people may not agree that playing in the cricket matches may not be 100% airtight for some but for me, it proves Druitt wasn't the Ripper.

[Chris]

When I say personally, I mean that some people may not agree that playing in the cricket matches may not be 100% airtight for some but for me, it proves Druitt wasn't the Ripper.

The point is that an alibi would be proof that Druitt was somewhere else at the time of the murder in question - or so close to the time of the murder that it would have been impossible for him to be there.

On the information in the public domain, the cricket matches simply do not provide that, because in every case there would demonstrably be plenty of time for Druitt to travel to and from the site of the murder. That's a matter of plain fact, not a matter of personal opinion.

[Uncle Jack]

The point is that an alibi would be proof that Druitt was somewhere else at the time of the murder in question - or so close to the time of the murder that it would have been impossible for him to be there.

On the information in the public domain, the cricket matches simply do not provide that, because in every case there would demonstrably be plenty of time for Druitt to travel to and from the site of the murder. That's a matter of plain fact, not a matter of personal opinion.

Hi Chris,

You make a good point there Chris. But the fact is that, even without an alibi, aside from the timing of Druitt's suicide, there is nothing to suggest he was the Ripper.

The best Chris,

[prowling cat]

Yes, for us the "evidence" that the Druitt family was convinced Montie was Jack the Ripper is second-hand.

Yet, we just don't know.

I agree.
I couldn't realy vote for him.
But then, I'm an amateur.
But I just wanted to explain why I can't put my money on him as the ripper.
All the best
Cat

[Chris]

You make a good point there Chris. But the fact is that, even without an alibi, aside from the timing of Druitt's suicide, there is nothing to suggest he was the Ripper.

I agree - at least that there's nothing beyond Macnaghten's "private information", which it's impossible for us to evaluate. I don't think it's likely Druitt (or any of the named suspects we know about) was the Ripper, but I just wanted to clarify that particular point about the cricket "alibi".

[Roy Corduroy]

Hi Jonathan,

I was wondering if you would care to expand on the below just a bit.

For years I could not really understand why a Blackheath school-master/barrister would seek victims so far away, and keep seeking them there after the East End was crawling with Bobbies? Why take the risk?

For me -- and I'm admittedly completely alone on this one -- this part of the puzzle was answered by Tom Cullen's breath-taking, Marxist-driven theory in his flawed but masterly 'Autumn of Terror' [1965]

A Marxist driven theory. Not quite following you.

Roy

[Dr. John Watson]

I agree - at least that there's nothing beyond Macnaghten's "private information", which it's impossible for us to evaluate. I don't think it's likely Druitt (or any of the named suspects we know about) was the Ripper, but I just wanted to clarify that particular point about the cricket "alibi".

Just to add a point here: There is absolutely no evidence that Macnaghten had any conversation or direct communication with any member of Druitt's family, private or otherwise. Everything he wrote is based on second-hand information gleaned from police informants, news articles and departmental reports. His "private information" on Druitt is therefore no more than unattributed gossip. In my opinion, the only reason Druitt's name is even mentioned as a possible suspect is because he killed himself at about the time the series of East End murders seemed to end.

I believe Druitt's suicide is connected with his sudden discharge from Mr. Valentine's school, and I suspect his firing probably was related to improper relations with a student or students. The shame and humiliation of being "found out," and the fear that his friends and fellow sportsmen would hear about it, might well have driven this fellow to suicide. His reference to "being like mother" in the note found by his brother may reflect his belief that his attraction to boys was a sign of insanity.

In any case, we likely would never have heard of Mr. Druitt had he not decided to drown himself when he did.

[Johnr]

Definately McNaughton Would Love Friday's Poll On Thursday

I have enjoyed this thread because posters have been so civil and understanding of each other's drifts.
Whilst numerical polls in various colours are diverting, I would really prefer more facts about Druitt.
At the moment we are supplied with limited mentions of Druitt in newspapers and institutional records. With the result that after a while, we seem to be passing the same discussion mile posts again. Pondering over limited details and weighing crime theory about Druitt's mental condition on the basis of rationed fact.

Perhaps some of the posters who feel so positively that Druitt could not possibly have "dunnit", could tell usa) how Druitt spent his spare time at Oxford (say in winter)?; (b) what his undergraduate attitude to Oxford prostitutes was?; (c) who he mixed with socially in London?;
(d) and how he spent those mystery years we do not seem to be able to account for in the 1880's?
You see, like Macnaghten, I haven't got a clue.

How about some of you "Nay Sayers" answering the above post I lodged a while ago? JOHN RUFFELS.

[Sam Flynn]

I'll answer the call, John!

Perhaps some of the posters who feel so positively that Druitt could not possibly have "dunnit", could tell usa) how Druitt spent his spare time at Oxford (say in winter)?; (b) what his undergraduate attitude to Oxford prostitutes was?; (c) who he mixed with socially in London?;
(d) and how he spent those mystery years we do not seem to be able to account for in the 1880's?

The point is, the "yay-sayers" are no better placed to answer those questions either.

[Roy Corduroy]

Yes I recall total silence on the forum as to your questions, John. Perhaps because there are no answers to them. Certainly good questions.

Roy