Who First Discovered The "West Of England Member" Article?

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

Hmmm. Periodicals-wise, didn't Ripperana start in 1994?

best wishes

Phil

[Johnr]

We're Getting Warmer Jonathan.

Good work Chris Scott and Phil C.,

So it is emerging that the first mention was sometime in 1993 or 1994.

I wonder if Paul Begg or Keith Skinner would care to get a message to us throwing light on the subject?

I did think at one stage it had been mentioned to me by Keith Skinner, but I think now, I might have been mistaken.I had a vague recollection it was in Howells & Skinners The Ripper Legacy. But cannot find it there.

We're getting warmer.

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Stewart P Evans]

May Be Wrong

Good work Chris Scott and Phil C.,
So it is emerging that the first mention was sometime in 1993 or 1994.
I wonder if Paul Begg or Keith Skinner would care to get a message to us throwing light on the subject?
I did think at one stage it had been mentioned to me by Keith Skinner, but I think now, I might have been mistaken.I had a vague recollection it was in Howells & Skinners The Ripper Legacy. But cannot find it there.
We're getting warmer.
JOHN RUFFELS.

I may be wrong but I think that it was Keith Skinner who originally found it. It was Andy Spallek who later identified Farquharson as the 'West of England member' when he located another newspaper article that named him.

[Phil Carter]

Hello John, Stewart,

Many thanks for that. I thought that might have been the answer, but was myself unsure.

best wishes

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Hello all,

As I for one have never seen it, perhaps it would be interesting for us to see the original cutting from the 11th Feb 1891, should anybody have it? With many thanks in advance,

best wishes

Phil

[Chris]

As I for one have never seen it, perhaps it would be interesting for us to see the original cutting from the 11th Feb 1891, should anybody have it? With many thanks in advance,

Here's the text:

Bristol Times and Mirror
Wednesday 11 February 1891
OUR LONDON LETTER
I give a curious story for what it is worth. There is a West of England member who in private declares that he has solved the mystery of "Jack the Ripper." His theory - and he repeats it with so much emphasis that it might almost be called his doctrine - is that "Jack the Ripper" committed suicide on the night of his last murder. I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it. He states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania. I do not know what the police think of the story, but I believe that before long a clean breast will be made, and that the accusation will be sifted thoroughly.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

Thank you for the text, but I was infact referring to the original newspaper itself. It is something that I cannot recall ever having seen (the original cutting).

best wishes

Phil

[Johnr]

I May Be Right I May Be Crazy..

Thanks Stewart,

Yes, I recall the story having some link back to Keith.

(An excellent scourer of the Pall Mall Gazette inter alia, and keen discoverer of principal player's - i.e. police and suspects- dates of birth!).

In answer to Phil's enquiry, I am sure the actual press item was posted on here wayback when...

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Stewart P Evans]

Actual Article

Hello Chris,
Thank you for the text, but I was infact referring to the original newspaper itself. It is something that I cannot recall ever having seen (the original cutting).
best wishes
Phil

I think that I posted the actual article on the boards years ago. Here it is again if you are curious.

[Jonathan H]

To Stewart,

Thanks for posting the pic of the MP morsel. I had been trying to find one for some time.

It quite took my breath away to see it, for real; the unheralded fragment which gives us a glimpse into what I consider -- to much ridicule -- to be the 'Rosetta Stone' which solves the mystery inside the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

[Chris Scott]

Stewart
Many thanks for posting that - very helpful and much appreciated
Regards
Chris

[Phil Carter]

Hello Stewart,

Many thanks for your posting this. It is indeed the first time I have seen it.

best wishes

Phil

[Johnr]

How Curious...

Thanks for posting those images of the actual article Stewart. Doesn't the page look pristine? Unlike the "Gloucester Journal" which was apparently tattered and torn.

Two things occur to me from re-reading the original story: surely, such a sensational item would have urged every journalist worth his or her salt, to find out who that Member was?

And then go and ask him lots of questions!
"Lots of people" believe his story.....
Sounds like the theory was doing the rounds. No-one daring to put it into print for fear of libel.

Surely, an indiscreet M.P. could have semaphored it in parliament? M.P.s were not subject to libel laws, that is, not subject if they said it in the parliament.

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Jonathan H]

To John R

First of all, I don't think there was much for reporters to go on as the MP is un-named and neither was the suspect.

Critically, the political party with whom the Member is affiliated is not named either.

Also we do not know if some reporters did not ask around and meet a stone wall, especially from politicians.

Henry Farquharson, the identified MP, was a backbench Tory in Opposition to Gladstone's last Liberal government.

There was no way he was going to raise it in Parliament, or in public at all, because of the potential scandal for his Party. That the Ripper was from a Conservative family and that the previous Tory government, plus Tory Anderson, had covered up a fellow gentleman's crimes and death. That the hunt on-going hunt for the killer was a sham, one which would nearly frag in a working-class sailor.

That Farquharson was a near neighbour of the Druitts and a fellow Tory suggests that is how the information travelled to the MP. That the MP was picking up constituency gossip -- and believed it, rightly or wrongly. This was politically foolish to tell people instead of going to the police, or doing nothing.

Other people who hear the story become believers too. Finally somebody has leaked it to the press.

This probably brought in CID in the form of fellow Gentleman, fellow Etonian and probable fellow Tory: Macnaghten. At that moment the story of the 'son of a surgeon' vanishes, in terms of new info apart from the MP being identified the following year -- in passing -- until Griffiths' account of 1898.

The MP story of 1891 refers with nail-biting fear to the libel laws.

Strange isn't it that Griffiths and his publishers were so relaxed about revealing more information about the un-named Druitt seven years later?

But by then the suspect was a doctor himself, surrounded by friends [not family], and the prime suspect of 1888 and not the too late suspect of 1891.

The MP's role in the story would never be referred to by Macnaghten, Griffiths, or Sims. In 1894, probable Tory Macnaghten hides Farquharson's identity from the Home Office behind 'private information', and buries that Druitt came to police attention too late.

A Report he never sent in the end. In 1898, he does the same in the Aberconway re-write, though making it clear that Druitt is almost certainly the Ripper -- without explaining how he knows that?

The only detail revealed by Griffiths, Sims and Macnaghten [in his memoirs] which matches the MP story is that the suspect killed himself on the night of the last murder -- and regarding Druitt this detail is not true.

I think that is because Macnaghten, in his 1891 unofficial investigation, discovered it was not true and yet held onto it for that very reason.

It further protected them all from a libel suit.