Montague John Druitt : Whitechapel Murderer ?

[Stephen Thomas]

Amazing how so many people can't spell 'definite' or 'definitely'

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Jonathan,
What I am saying is that Farquharson was probably a very unreliable source.I wrote more fully above about my reasons for thinking this in my first post above , so I wont repeat them yet again.
With regards to Druitt"s family ,I totally disagree.There were hundreds of frightened families during the Ripper Investigation and family members both wrote off letters to the police about their fears and went with their worries to the police station to talk about an unstable or violent relative that they feared might be the Ripper .It is documented and it is quite common even today for a family member to give voice to their fears in this way about contemporary murders . Usually the police are able to reassure them , that their relative is not the person they are looking for.
Anyway,others want to chip in here so I will leave it there for now,
All the Best,
Norma

[Jonathan H]

Yes, Natalie, and I think that Macnaghten would be expected to give such reassurance -- very sympathetically and very charmingly.

Yet he did not?

If he met them at all, of course.

On the other hand, a line of argument against Macnaghten and his preferred suspect is that this amateur 'Sherlock' may have fallen under the family's hysterical spell, whether he met them or not.

For example, the Druitt family may -- by 1891 -- have misremembered, in an historinic way, the timing of their Montie's suicide in relation to the Mary Kelly murder. That they honestly believed, by then, that he killed himself in the hours after her murder and grotesque mutilation. That Macnaghten did not rigorously check and challenge this belief, again whether he met them or not.

For this detail is the one piece of data common to the MP story, Mac's Report(s), Griffiths, Sims and Mac's memoirs -- and it's demonstrably false.

[Adam Went]

Jonathan H:

Druitt's death was definitely convenient for the police. Macnaghten writes his memorandum in 1894, finds out that Druitt thought he was going a bit mad and drowned himself after the MJK murder, and decides...."Hmm, let's blame the bloke that isn't here anymore."

Again, if it hadn't been for Macnaghten's memorandum which was filled with schoolboy factual errors, coming from a top ranked officer, and the timing of Druitt's suicide, we would never have linked him to the case. So the case against him is on shaky ground before it even starts.

Druitt is not the best suspect when it comes to eyewitnesses either. Many of the witnesses described a man with a moustache, and others of a man who had a foreign appearance. Druitt was neither of these. About the only thing he has going for him is that he fitted in the age bracket.

The cricket timetable isn't really exaggerated - Annie was killed at 5.30 AM. Your average game of cricket starts at about 10 AM - and he would obviously have had to be at the ground atleast an hour or so before that. That leaves him a window of about 3 hours to travel to the game - and without any sleep. Would have been a very tough day....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Jonathan H]

To Adam

The timing of the cricket match does not convince me as a problem at all, so we will just have to agree to disagree.

Lawende is arguably the best witness, and that the police seem to have thought so too. You can forget the rest. Therefore a very good generic likeness -- assuming Druitt looked as an adult like he did in his last high school pics. So again, we will have to agree to disagree [you can counter-claim that Macnaghten disagrees with me too, as he never, ever, makes such a connection with his suspect regarding this eyewitness, whom he seems to have forgotten existed at all].

It was not a 'conveniently timed' suicide at all, as it meant that the police hunt had been an embarrassing waste of time since Kelly, something not admitted -- in fact veiled from the public -- until Mac's memoirs in 1914. Much better would have been a madman, preferably not one from the 'better classes', who killed himself right after the Coles murder -- and presumably none were ready to hand if you take a cynical approach.

Again, we agree to disagree.

Look, a stronger line of argument, to back you up, is that by Stewart Evans. He points out that the 1894 official version of the Macnaghten Report should be seen as Macnaghten's real opinion of Druitt, for unlike memoirs -- and whatever self-serving tall tales he passed on to cronies -- it is official. In that document Montie is such a totally minor suspect, one with 'no shadow of proof' against him and no witnesses [there goes Lawende?] that Scotland Yard never even bothered to verify if he was a doctor or not [just a better bet than Cutbush].

[Chris]

The cricket timetable isn't really exaggerated - Annie was killed at 5.30 AM. Your average game of cricket starts at about 10 AM - and he would obviously have had to be at the ground atleast an hour or so before that. That leaves him a window of about 3 hours to travel to the game - and without any sleep. Would have been a very tough day....

There's no need to invoke "your average game of cricket". This point has been discussed many, many times, and it's been known for decades that the game began at 11.30. Druitt would have had ample time to travel to Blackheath and prepare for the game in the six hours that were available.

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Chris.

In my haste, trying to poste whilst working -- on the run -- I had left that counter-point hanging.

[Adam Went]

Jonathan H:

You're a fellow Australian, surely you've played a bit of cricket in your time, and would know that it is quite a physically demanding sport? Not the sort of sport you want to be playing after a big night out with little or no sleep? Especially back in the days when the pads had steel straps rather than velcrow ones!!

Lawende is the only witness you choose to accept? What about the testimony of a police officer, PC Smith? Or Israel Schwartz? Or George Hutchinson? Or Elizabeth Long? There's several others who deserve consideration, not just Lawende...

Considering that Macnaghten wrote his initial memoirs in 1894, that was just 6 years after the murders, which is much sooner than his contemporaries or named their suspects who wrote their autobiographies in the 1900's - 1930's. They should have been fresh in his mind and yet he makes so many factual errors that one can only dismiss his memorandum as a piece of mis-informed garbage. It is not a reliable source of information on any day of the week. I mean, he had Michael Ostrog on there! Come on!

Chris:

Fair enough, the game started at 11.30. So Druitt would have had to have been at the around at about 10 AM, 10.30 at the latest, for warm-ups and preparation, pre-match.

So, if he was Annie's killer, he was in Spitalfields at 5.30 AM that morning. You're saying that he travelled from Spitalfields to Blackheath between 5.30 and 10 AM, and then participated in a cricket match?

Let me assure you that this is extremely unlikely....he would have been having a snooze while fielding!

Cheers,
Adam.

[Chris]

So, if he was Annie's killer, he was in Spitalfields at 5.30 AM that morning. You're saying that he travelled from Spitalfields to Blackheath between 5.30 and 10 AM, and then participated in a cricket match?

I'm saying there would be no problem at all about the timings, even if you do imagine the players turned up an hour and a half before the game. Even in that case there would have been several hours to spare.

People sometimes seem to think Blackheath is outside London. In fact, technically speaking, it's in Inner London, and getting from Spitalfields to Blackheath is no great journey at all.

Whether you think Druitt would have been too tired to play cricket after being out all night is a separate question.

[jason_c]

Jonathan,
The Farquharson family,starting with dad seem not to have been quite right in the head.
The Father [Henry Farquharson] bred 150 Newfoundland dogs and they were exercised by two kennel boys who couldnt quite manage them.One day a catrastrophic fight broke out and 45 were torn to bits during their "constitutional".Father Farquharson who had a demonic temper then laid into the two kennel boys and almost beat them to a pulp.

Next we have the MP Farquharson,his son, who specialised,it would appear,not in mad dogs but in the spread of malice.
His adversary in the West Dorset elections was a man named Charles Tindal Gatty.
Apparently,instead of simply promoting himself as the better prospective MP for West Dorset, this Farquarson chap went round the constituency with large placards ,making hellfire speeches saying that Gatty had been expelled from Charterhouse school,at the age of twelve, for acts of "impropriety".

Gatty sued him for 5 thousand pounds-----about half a million today, and he won,though the costs were halved by agreement later.
But clearly this was a man with some kind of need to spread malicious rumour of one kind or another----especially about people who he perceived to have sexual orientations that differed. Druitt may simply have been unfortunate enough to have been perceived by Farquharson to been of a different sexual orientation from him [and his mad dad Henry] and therefore game for the spread of more malicious rumour!
Might it not be best to take anything he "may have said and spread " with a large pinch of salt? After all --Druitt wasnt around to defend himself.........

I wonder if Farquharson Senior was one of the original characters in that song, "Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun"?

Just as an aside Jonathan,if this Farquarson chap was in fact the chap who was believed to have initiated all the rumours about Druitt and Macnaghten, then, as a former old Etonion school friend and fellow "tea planter" in India was "put in the picture" by Farquharson,then having received a pile of potentially libelous " private information" from Farquharson its no wonder he burnt it all to a cinder! He might very well have anticipated being implicated in some exorbitant damages being brought by the Druitt family!

Natalie,

I cant agree with this at all. Fighting an election by using dirty tricks is totally different to the need to spread malicious gossip. Politics is a dirty business at the best off times, politics during an election is especially "cut throat."

[Natalie Severn]

Facts or evidence very much needed to back up speculation

Natalie,

I cant agree with this at all. Fighting an election by using dirty tricks is totally different to the need to spread malicious gossip. Politics is a dirty business at the best off times, politics during an election is especially "cut throat."

Jason,

It was not so much the dirty tricks as the outrageous way in which he conducted his hate campaign against this man.
Farquharson apparently went round his constituency with large placards making defamatory speeches about his opposite number ,which I personally have not heard of happening in an election campaign.And it got him into some serious trouble with the law.
If I had been Macnaghten,I would ,like he says he did do , hurriedly have burnt any "private information" that arrived from the Farquharson quarter knowing its contents could become a case of libel.
In any case, how would Farquharson have known? Its all totally speculative, Jason, lets not kid ourselves. No basis whatsoever in any known facts about Druitt, let alone even the flimsiest glimpse of any evidence---not even circumstantial.

[Jonathan H]

The issue of the cricket match has never impressed me as a reason against Montie being the fiend, and it does not now. A person with a busy life, and with perhaps a busy secret life, takes his opportunities when he can.

You say that I might have experience with Cricket. Well, yes, when younger I have played it, including when in the grip of the most atrocious hangover -- but I still showed up on time and bowled quite effectively.

As I have written before, however dodgy Farquharson was this is a factor known to Macnaghten at the time.

What we do not know is how the MP stumbled upon the Druitt secret but surely his geographical proximity to their family home is key here?

From an historical point of view the MP fragment is one of the most important sources in the whole case because its date, 1891, matches the ignorance of other police figures, which matches the admission of Mac's Memoirs ['some years after'], it matches why the 'private info.' is unidentified in any source [potentially politically sensitive], and it provides a source who would have known Druitt, or the Druitts, or about M J Druitt. A source who could have supplied accurate biog. information to Macnaghten.

The Mac Report, official version, is a very, very slippery document. Mac does not say Druitt was a doctor, just 'said to be ...' [well, not by Farquy?] does not mention his age, does not claim he killed himself within hours of the Kelly murder. What errors? Most importantly, and for me this was the biggest revelation, it does not admit what his memoirs do and what the MP story confirms -- it was not a lack of proof against Druitt which rendered him an alleged minor suspect. It was that he was dead, years dead. This is totally obscured in this official source. It was at that moment that I began to understand how Mac operates; that his agenda runs on several levels at once.

[Natalie Severn]

Where is there proof of any kind concerning Druitt?

Hang on Jonathan.Macnaghten did make an error in saying "said to be a doctor".He was not.He was a barrister /school teacher. Then you say," It was not a lack of proof' and that this is what convinced you. Well you do not know that Macnaghten even had "private information"----you have no way of knowing what constituted that "private information" ,only his word. That really is not sufficient because there hasnt been a shred of evidence that Macnaghten ever had any "proof". Yes he may have "said he had" but so did Anderson about a very different suspect. We cannot just take his word over any of this.Macnaghten,for all we know, may have made the whole thing up about "proof" or "private information" that he said he burnt.And he may have made it up with an eye on the main chance moreover! "When Days of My Years " was published in 1913 Macnaghten ,like Anderson, was able to satisfy his publishers -Mac knew who the ripper was because he alone had seen the private information from Druitt"s family or whoever- and you can see the glint in the publishers eye....the "aha!.But it was all a load of nonsense in my view.Just like Anderson was able to say to the public, we knew way back who he was but "his people" stopped us getting him hung and instead we got him safely locked up in the bin.Druitt was easier.He was dead.So no incriminations were possible----because he was dead shortly after the last murder.How very convenient!

[Jonathan H]

To Natalie

So inconvenient was everything about Druitt that Macnaghten had to veil much from the Home Office in 1894 [though never sent, as never requested] to make it seem as if the evidence against this suspect was very weak -- just better than Cutbush.

The truth was that Montie was long dead and therefore the reason they could not arrest him was not because of the merrits, or demerits, of the case against him, but because he was long deceased and the the police had never heard of him.

Imagine ever admitting that? Yet he did exactly that in his memoirs, in 1914!

But if he admitted in 1894 that this was the man who 'in all probability' was the Ripper then the timing of his suicide was excruciatingly inconvenient.

It would mean admitting that Scotland Yard was on a wild goose chase, with varying intensity, for over two years -- and had made a hash of the case against Tom Sadler for Coles. That would be, arguably, unfair criticism, yet typical of the tabloids.

Therefore Macnaghten had to create a bureaucratic sleight of hand; he had to push Druitt forward -- because he was Jack the Ripper after all -- and yet pull back on any certainty about this suspect because of the inconvenient timing of his demise.

He also had to further obscure Druitt by making him one of a crowd.

He could not put in real contemporaneous suspects as that gives the game away about opening yourself up for charges of police incompetence.

That tabloid-sensation Tumblety is out because his fleeing was so humiliating.

Sadler is out because he had sued the press, successfully, and so it would be too dangerous to mention him as a Ripper suspect.

Plus it would have to be admitted that hunt for the fiend was being carried out as late as 1891. Instead Sadler is hinted as the murderer of Coles, but you would never know from this document that he was also suspected as being Jack -- and that is the way Mac wanted it.

A minor suspect, the sad, self--abuser Kosminski [so minor his first name has been forgotten] was thrown in to satisfy the concept of a local Jew, and an incarcerated madman, but one who replaces any lingering sectarian scares about 'Leather Apron', and substitutes for the dead-end that was Pizer.

Kosminski is also, by implication, exonerated as he is locked up five months after the five murders. It took longer to lock him up than the length of the Ripper's reign of terror. Kosminski was at large, completely harnless until then, yet was mentally deteriorating and heading for a life in an asylum. Mac was careful not admit Kosminski's incarceration as to when it actually happened: mere days before the Coles murder. That was too embarrassing. Five months takes care of Kosminski's innocence, whilst making him appear -- at a stretch -- to be a sort-of contemporanous suspect.

He wasn't and this is what Mac is also veiling from the Home Office. If Kosminski was the fiend the real reason he was not arrested is that information arrived after he had been institutionalised -- too late again!

Mac cements the idea of the 'autumn of terror' and the five 'canonical' murders as if the police knew this AT THE TIME, when in fact it was created by Mac finding Druitt.

It is the incovenient timing of his suicide which forever detached Frances Coles from the 'Jack' murders, which is why detectives such as Reid were later left bewildered and scoffing.

That Mary Kelly was the last victim was a post-Druitt, eg. post 1891, theory of the mystery. It did not appear in public until 1898, and was challenged though not with vigor because of the Major's rank, prestige and top police contacts.

Also, Mac could not leave it at these two, unlikely suspects in the official version of his Report -- neither of whom were actually being investigated at the time of the murders between 1888 to 1891 -- as that would look indecisive, look like a split [in fact there was a split, even a feud between himself and the insufferable Anderson] -- risk looking incompetent.

Mac therefore threw in a third name, Ostrog, a Slavic thief whom he knew was not Jack, but also would be unlikely to sue as he was poor, foreign and mad. He could also be made to seem some sort of dodgy medico, which is waht he did to Druitt too. Ostrog would not recognise himself as a Ripper suspect if the Home Sec. mentioned him in the Commons, as he had never been one.

Plus, two Gentiles would neutralise the idea of a Jewish Ripper, whilst acknowledging one of the Hebrews as a 'suspect', though a barely plausible one because -- why did he suddenly stop?

In this contect two is a 'crowd' but three makes for a 'list'.

Mac in 1898 went much further, rewriting his Report to discard the 'straw men' Kosminski and Ostrog, blatantly misleading Griffiths and Sims that Montie was 'Dr Jekyll' for real and THE contemperaneous suspect.

No wonder Abberline is perplexed and confused in 1903.

What with Sims claiming that the police were about to arrest this middle-aged, reclusive physician when, he suddenly vanished, and then turned up a water-logged corpse 'a month later'. Even though the mad doctor's friends contacted the police that he was missing [since he did not work for two years, how would they know ..?] AND that he was the Ripper, the police already know all this from their super-efficient, 'exhaustive' inquiry.

What a story!?

Yes, what an unlikely story ...

It is school-boy cheeky as it totally upends the embarrassing truth; in 1891 a Tory MP, not a policeman, stumbled upon the Ripper's identity, and discovered that he was dead, and that it was all over years before.

In fact, far from being co-operative, concerned citizens the doctor's pals -- actually the late barrister's family -- may have threatened a law suit against one and all, if it was alleged that they had 'believed' and done nothing. To keep the litigious Druitts happy, they become the mythical pals who head straight for the nearest Bobbie when their unstable buddy, 'twice' locked up as a lunatic, is late back from one his idle jaunts on a bus.

Once you understand the various pressures and counter-vailing pressures acting upon Macnaghten, a smooth political operator, then everything that seems to not make sense, does make sense.

For example, he cannot write 'Mr M J Druitt, barrister, 31 ...' because if that is read out in the Commons, then reprinted in the press, it could lead to a libel suit -- hence in 1898 Griffiths changing 'family' into 'friends'.

Mac cannot trust the Liberals with a potential Tory scandal so Farquharson as the source must be totally omitted and protected.

If he writes 'said to be a doctor ...' about a man now downplayed as just a minor suspect among other minor ones -- but better than Cutbush! -- it both suggests that Druitt is not the Ripper, as we never bothered to verify his job, and it also means that the Home Sec. will say words to the effect that 'a man believed to be a physician', or simply 'physician' concealing Montie's identity, as the name will never be read out. It will not even offend the medical establishment because it sounds like he was a fraudulent medico, just like this other one, the Russian swine being also mentioned, un-named, by Asquith?

It never came to that, of course.

Let me give you another tiny example of how a nagging anomaly can now be understood. In the 'Aberconway' version it reads as 'Dec 3rd' when Druitt was pulled from the Thames. Yet Mac writes 'seven weeks' -- and Griffiths has the correct date of Dec 31st. Yet Sims began to write that the body was pulled from the Thames 'a month later' from the Kelly murder. Macnaghten tried to get Griffiths to write the same, but he simply added up the weeks and spotted the 'error'. The much more credulous Sims was more easily manipulated; to redact Druitt's suicide to the night of the Kelly murder ['a shrieking, raving fiend'] and to thus move the retrieval of the corpse from its real date too.

Why do all that?

You have to do do all that if you are trying to both reveal and conceal Druitt.

[Adam Went]

Chris, Jonathan H:

I've been lucky enough to be able to view a couple of the scorecards from Druitt's cricket matches (unfortunately, none of them the September 9 match) in the past, and I can tell you from my analysis of these that Druitt was an opening bowler (therefore, you can be 99% sure that he was fast/fast medium) and he batted in the middle order (batted 4 and 5 in the two matches I read about, IIRC).

So, he was a bit of an all-rounder. Now that is a very demanding role to play in any team, international or B-grade club cricket. It's not like he was some passenger player who sent down 1 or 2 overs of off-spin, batted at 10 and then spent the rest of the day, hands on hips fielding at fine leg. That is my interpretation of the scorecards, anyway.

That would be the type of role in the team that would be physically demanding and exhausting even if you'd slept for 12 hours the night before - let alone just been out all night and then travelled across London to prepare for a cricket match.

Anyway, all of that is relatively minor compared to the fact that the entire case against Druitt is built out of a deck of cards. There is nothing whatsoever linking him to the case other than Macnaghten, the fact that he lived in the area, fits in the age bracket and died shortly after the murders. That's it.

There are many, many other suspects which better cases against them than that!

Cheers,
Adam.