Some info on Lionel Druitt

[Jonathan H]

That's rubbish and you know it.

[Chris]

I do not need to say that 'I think' the source Farson allegedly persued has not turned up. It hasn't turned up! Ir's a fact not an opinion.

But that is not what you said, and not what I objected to.

You said that Farson "made it up". That is not a fact - it's speculation. It's not even an opinion you hold consistently yourself, because you've just stated in other posts that he may have been "mistaken", and that it's possible "his memory played tricks on him".

As for what you say about being in "a fight" with me, if it is "a fight" it's not of my seeking - in fact I don't respond to your posts where it can be avoided.

[Adam Went]

Hey Jonathan,

Thanks for the kind words about the research, also thanks for the info, and I do agree with what you're saying in regards to the document.

Another point about it is that even IF such a document ever existed, and even IF it was written by Lionel Druitt, entirely as a hypothetical, surely other members of the Druitt family in Australia would have been aware of it and would have made every effort to either destroy it, or atleast make sure that it was well and truly hidden from public view or discovery. Why allow even the vaguest possibility of the release of such an apparently incriminating document?

Chris, you mention newcomers to the board, and you're right as well, we don't want to mislead them - so we are setting them on the right path by saying that this story of a document, written by Lionel Druitt or otherwise, has been dead in the water for decades now and, simply, is not what it has been claimed to be.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Jonathan H]

To Adam

I am very sorry, mate, that your excellent research has become intertwined, in a minor though irritating way, with this other poster's and my fight.

Which is what it is. A fight. Defend yourself or fold.

If I defend myself then I am 'engaging in a 'nonsensical slanging match'.

So I can't win anyway.

I do not need to say that 'I think' the source Farson allegedly persued has not turned up. It hasn't turned up! Ir's a fact not an opinion.

It almost certainly never will.

People like him never register how condescending and rude they are, but are always gobsmacked when people are at them?

Actually, I often preface what I write with 'nobody agrees with me' or 'for what it is worth' or 'big guns like Evans and Begg and Palmer do not agree with me' but it always counts for nothing at all with certain people.

This is because it is not my 'posting style' that offends but the opinion which I am posting. Mind you, it is so wearing. In that sense the chipping away does have its desired effect and you think, as others who have left have done, why bother?

[Chris]

As for you, Chris, you started what you call a 'nonsensical slanging match' by accusing me of deliberately misleading people, when all I was doing was disagreeing with your opinion.

No, Jonathan, I did not "accuse you of deliberately misleading people". I simply pointed out that when you state speculation as though it is fact - as you incessantly do - people may be misled.

Remember that there are always newcomers on these boards who aren't aware of what is documented and what is not, and who may not be familiar with your posting style. Is it really so much to ask that you slip in an occasional "I think ..." or "I wonder if ..."?

[Jonathan H]

To Adam

I congratulate you on brilliant primary source research, and cool-headed analysis, of what is, obviously, a red herring.

Farson sat on Druitt's name from 1959 out of deference to Lady Aberconway's wishes. Hence the blacking out on the death certificate's iof Druitt's name on his TV show. Though anybody could go and look up the same document.

Apparently Cullen stole or copied the Aberconway Version [this is an inside story and I am not aware that Farson ever publicly named Cullen as the 'thief'] and scooped Farson, in terms of publishing Druiitt's name and Macnaghten's actual opinion, with his 'Autumn of terror' of 1965. We only have Farson's word that he was as certain, as he later claimed to be, about trying, from 1961, to locate his 'holy grail' source.

The point is that Farson, from the moment he was trumped by a rival, is a biased and tainted secondary source because he wants to still have some sort of ultimate scoop about Druitt. Predictably, it will be a source that will 'prove' Druitt's guilt, something Cullen had not done.

Relations between Dan Farson and Tom Cullen were so frosty that in the former's book of 1972 he bitchily does not mention, in Chapter IX: The Social Reformer, that this was originally Cullen's theory -- based on the American Marxist taking literally a tasteless though very witty, contemporaneous article by no less than the young George Bernard Shaw.

As for you, Chris, you started what you call a 'nonsensical slanging match' by accusing me of deliberately misleading people, when all I was doing was disagreeing with your opinion.

[Adam Went]

I won't pretend to have a solution to the question over Farson's research, but what I do know is that it doesn't make any sense for Lionel Druitt to have been the one who wrote the document, pamphlet, or whatever. By the time of the Whitechapel Murders, Lionel Druitt was a married man and had been living in Australia for some time - news and correspondence coming from overseas in the 1880's was slow at best, so how would he have even been made aware that his cousin was involved? Especially since Monty committed suicide in the first few days of December 1888, it's not like there was some family reunion a couple of years later where Lionel was made aware of it or something of that nature.

Furthermore, having researched him, it's clear that he didn't go much on controversy. During his 5 years in Swansea, despite being involved with several organisations in the area, the only time that I can find he ever went public with anything was in April 1892 when he wrote a letter to The Mercury defending his practices as a doctor. Indeed, he stated in that very letter something to the effect of "this will be the only letter that I will write". So, why write the pamphlet? Why implicate your own cousin when you weren't even on the same continent at the time, people involved with the murders are still alive and you have descendants who could be easily tracked? No, it makes no sense.

A far more likely scenario, IMO, is that Farson got a tip from somewhere about this Australian connection and started researching it, but he had to choose somebody who would know Druitt well but who was also in Australia for it to work, yet somebody who had been dead long enough for it not to be questionable - enter his cousin, Dr. Lionel Druitt. So it may not have been entirely without foundation in the beginning but it became something of a red herring later on.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Chris]

Jonathan

I have no intention of getting drawn into one of your nonsensical slanging matches.

But I will repeat - for the third time - that the point I am making is simply that the "explanation" given by Howells and Skinner is no explanation at all. If you disagree, you have only to explain how it is supposed to work - something I have never seen done.

As for what really happened, as I've said, I think it's more likely that Farson's memory was at fault (as you yourself suggested in post 13), though that explanation isn't entirely satisfactory, for the reason I have given.

I don't find it at all believable that Farson would have deliberately invented the information in the Knowles letter and then wasted his own time and money following up the fake "lead". He certainly didn't do it as a response to Cullen publishing Druitt's name. Cullen didn't publish until 1965 - six years after Farson's TV documentary - whereas Farson was openly investigating the Dandenong connection (though still withholding Druitt's surname) in 1961.

[Jonathan H]

No, it's not 'speculation' because there is no such source.

Either an embittered Farson made the whole thing up, or his memory played tricks on him and kept doing so. He did not publish on the Ripper until 1972, and the alleged missing/stolen source/artifact, the one which would break the case wide open, is a very old and very stale cliche.

Howells and Skinner came up with a reasonable explanation that was probably too polite?

I wish you would stop misleading people with your need to keep alive a 'mystery' where there is none.

[Chris]

Farson essentially made it up and then added details to it, as he found them, or should I say backdated them to make the tale have legs.

The point I'm making is that the "explanation" given by Howells and Skinner is no explanation at all.

Regarding your speculation, all I can do is repeat what I've said before. I just wish you would make it clear that it's just speculation, because otherwise some people may be misled.

[Jonathan H]

Yes, but if you 'turn the telescope around' you discover that the whole story hinges on one source, Farson, who was manically biased against Tom Cullen for ripping off his stuff and publishing Druitt's name ahead of him -- because being a Yank, and a Commie, and a real journalist, he didn't give a stuff about the sensibilities of Lady Aberconway.

There is nothing to it.

Farson essentially made it up and then added details to it, as he found them, or should I say backdated them to make the tale have legs.

[Chris]

As for the document - surely there's not much chance that there's multiple documents called "The East End Murderer - I Knew Him" ? Bearing in mind that Farson was doing his research in the 1950's, memories would become very,very faded and distorted by that time, as demonstrated by other statements Farson collected.....the whole premise that an actual relative of Druitt would have written something to that effect and left it behind just sounds a little beyond the realms of belief in itself as well.

But it wouldn't be a question of "multiple documents called "The East End Murderer - I Knew Him"", because the St Arnaud Mercury article didn't bear that title. It was just a run-of-the-mill Ripper story, of which there were so many around that time.

I challenge anyone to come up with a plausible explanation of how a random Ripper story appearing in an Australian newspaper in a town where Lionel Druitt just happened to be living, could cause anyone years later to write Farson a letter saying that a Lionel Druitt, Drewett, or Drewery had written a document entitled "The East End Murderer - I knew him", which was printed in a completely different town - bearing in mind that M. J. Druitt's name was not at that time in the public domain as a Ripper suspect. As an explanation, it makes no sense.

A more likely explanation may be that Farson was simply confused about what the letter had said. The letter had been stolen along with a dossier of his Ripper material. He had made a separate note of it, but unfortunately it's not clear from his book exactly how much that note said. If he was supplying part of it from memory, that memory could obviously have been coloured by his subsequent findings.

But I've never really been satisfied by that explanation. One remarkable coincidence it would leave unexplained is that the document was supposed to have been printed at Dandenong, and Lionel Druitt did later live near there - something Farson could not have known until he started researching the Australian connection in earnest.

[Jonathan H]

Unless it is Farson who was mistaken; was over-reaching himself?

I mean just consider what the source was supposed to be saying.

Me, and my family -- strangers in a strange land -- are related to Jack the Ripper, and we want the world to know it?

[Adam Went]

Hi John and Chris,

You, and anybody else that's interested, can read Andy Spallek's article for free online now, here:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...pallek&f=false

I wasn't aware of this until recently myself, although I do have the original published issue of Ripper Notes which that article is in, as I was a subscriber at the time.

I do agree with you both about posting research online, it would be a great benefit to everybody, but unfortunately it doesn't always work out the way that you would hope. For instance:

A long, long time ago, I researched, obtained articles, transcribed them and then co-write "Jack the Ripper and the Tasmanian Press", my very first article for Ripperologist which was published in Dec. 2005. Some considerable amount of time later, I decided to do just what you are suggesting here, and donate all of the articles that appeared in Ripperologist, as well as some others that "didn't make the cut" to Casebook to add to the Press Reports section (especially since it's quite scant on Australian news reports anyway).
The offer was accepted and so I sent along everything that I had - 3 or 4 years later, those news articles have never been added to the Casebook collection.

So when things like that happen it just makes you question the worth of making such donations.

As for the document - surely there's not much chance that there's multiple documents called "The East End Murderer - I Knew Him" ? Bearing in mind that Farson was doing his research in the 1950's, memories would become very,very faded and distorted by that time, as demonstrated by other statements Farson collected.....the whole premise that an actual relative of Druitt would have written something to that effect and left it behind just sounds a little beyond the realms of belief in itself as well.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Chris]

Adam

I haven't read Andy Spallek's article, but from what you quote, it sounds as though he had just accepted the "explanation" of the Dandenong Document given by Howells and Skinner, in Ripper Legacy. However, I agree with what John says above. What H and S suggested is no explanation at all. There's no way it could explain what Farson reported of the contents of the letter from Knowles.

I also agree with John about posting material on a freely accessible site. I believe most or all of the Ripper periodicals have said they have no objection to this provided an appropriate period is allowed to elapse after publication. If I understand correctly, for the Examiner, the period is two months. (Accordingly I shall be posting my own small contribution with the new photo of Lawende here in August.)