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Grey River Argus report, 1905

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  • #1

    Grey River Argus report, 1905

    Here's an interesting report from the ever-reliable Grey River Argus (New Zealand) of 14 July 1905:
    http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=GRA19050714.2.2


    Following a confession to the Whitechapel Murders by Charles Hermann in New York (cf http://www.casebook.org/press_report.../19050410.html ), various comments are quoted. Forbes Winslow says "I am convinced that this may be" - the man he suspected all along. George Sims indicates that he doesn't believe a word of it. And an official of Scotland Yard says that the perpetrator is known to have been a man who committed suicide in the Thames after the last murder:

    Click image for larger version Name: GreyRiverArgus14July1905_detail.jpg Views: 1 Size: 40.8 KB ID: 669744

    I'm inclined to think this is nothing more than a journalistic distillation of Sims's own statement two years earlier in response to Abberline's suspicions regarding Chapman/Klosowski, but there you have it.

    "A little more than a month later 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. The body had been in the water about a month.

    I am betraying no confidence in making this statement, because it has been published by an official who had an opportunity of seeing the Home Office Report, Major Arthur Griffiths, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of prisons."

    [The Referee, April 5, 1903]
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  • #2
    Druitt

    I am sure you know all about M.J. Druitt so I wont go into detail but I belive they are speaking of him.

    yours truly
    Washington Irving:

    "To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world without go as it may; let kingdoms rise and fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bills, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The arm chair in his throne; the poker his sceptre, and the little parlour of some twelve feet square, his undisputed empire. "

    Stratford-on-Avon

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    • #3
      Gee....do you think that's why Chris posted this in the forum about Montague Druitt?

      Let all Oz be agreed;
      I need a better class of flying monkeys.

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      • #4
        Well my bad miss perfect, I didnt see the forum it was posted on.
        Washington Irving:

        "To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world without go as it may; let kingdoms rise and fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bills, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The arm chair in his throne; the poker his sceptre, and the little parlour of some twelve feet square, his undisputed empire. "

        Stratford-on-Avon

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        • #5
          What a great find, Chris!

          I presume this is a New Zealns paper repeating as story which come over the wire from London?

          My immediate suspicion, if this is a journalist quoting a real official at the Yard, is that it is the Assistant Commissioner himself, Melville Macnaghten.

          This is because no other official at the Yard would have known about such a detailed, conclusive and final Ripper report which was sent to the Home Secretary -- because no such thing existed?

          There was, of course, the official version of the Macnaghten Report, from Feb 1894, probably prepared for that department of state but never sent there, as it was never requested. By 1905, it gathered dust in Scotland Yard's files.

          There was also the non-official version of that Report, which I argue that Macnaghten rewrote in 1898 to dazzle and mislead literary cronies, and which rejigged the unlikely trio into very compelling suspects -- favouring the suicided, middle-aged, unemployed yet affluent physician from Blackheath.

          A suspect who never literally existed either!

          I believe Macnaghten deceitfully told probably Griffiths and certainly Sims -- as the 1903 quote from the very confident 'criminologist' shows -- that this, the 'Aberconway' version', was a copy of a definitive Report to the Home Office -- and this was bunkum and he knew it.

          Ironically, all anybody at the Home Office would have known about this 'Drowned Doctor' Super-suspect is what they could have gleaned from those writers.

          The other reason that I think that this is Macnaghten speaking, unless I have misread the excerpt, is that this top cop was very cirumspect in his 1913 press comments and his 1914 memoirs about Druitt. Apart from never naming him, he never committed himself to personally claiming that the suspect was a doctor -- or even drowned!?

          Another reason is that telescoping of Druitt's death to immediately after Kelly's, so that if you wanted to find when this Mad Doctor's body was pulled from the Thames you would be looking for early December.

          In fact, Christabel Aberconway hand-wrote the date of the recovery of Druitt's body as 'Dec 3rd 1888'. What confuses this issue as to whether Macnaghten was trying to fudge the true date, in the rewriteof his Report, is that Griffiths records, accurately the date as Dec 31st. Sims moves between that date and the earlier one -- further muddying the issue?

          Nevertheless, if you wanted to make sure that Druitt's identity was veiled then what this police official claims [either Macnaghten, or somebody he has briefed] then this obfuscation will help do the job.

          So, if this is Macnaghten then it fits his cagey style; he says nothing which he knows to be a lie. As in he knows that Druitt really did drown, but also that he was not really a doctor -- and so that false trail is here excluded.

          It's the prefect fix.

          In 1905, some swine the police have never heard of allegedly confesses to the crime, and Macnaghten is able to quickly quash this humiliating 'scoop' of a Ripper-who-got-away-completely with the 'Drowned Doctor', Sims' shilling shocker -- without endangering the Yard from either a libel suit from the Druitt family, or a too-nosy reporter who might discover that the police only learned of Mad Montie 'some years after' his Thames plunge.

          Montage John Druitt was unrecoverable, without knowing the suspect's name, and I think this was a deliberate shell game by Macnaghten.

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          • #6
            Here is a somewhat fuller version from the UK Daily Mail of April 12 1905. However, this account makes no mention of the suicide in the Thames etc.
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