Some info on Lionel Druitt

[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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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 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?

[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.

[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.

[Jonathan H]

That's rubbish and you know it.

[Johnr]

The Troubling Daniel Farson

Jonathan H,

Did you know Daniel Farson was born in the U.S. of A.?
Did you know he served in the U.S.Army, where he trained as a photographer?

It was very likely this that prompted him and Tom Cullen to join forces researching JTR at one stage.

It is true Farson privately named Cullen as the man who stole his attache case one lunchtime. This bulging bag contained not only his JTR research, but also the transcripts of the, then proposed, three JTR programmes.
And presumeably, copies of the Macnaghten Memorandum. And viewers letters.

In actual fact, Cullen was not the first of the duo to publicly reveal Druitt's name!

Farson did so in Australia in 1961!!


The tangled skein of Farson's behaviour about the time of those Rediffusion programmes in 1959, and subsequently, will form the substance of the first piece I intend writing for Ripperologist.

David Andersen knew Dan Farson around that time. He could probably answer some of your conjectures. Because Jonathan, that's what they are.

Nothing wrong with speculation and theorising.

I learnt recently that Sherlock Holmes should have been described as making "inductions" not "deductions".

I intend writing a second article on Dr Lionel Druitt and my search for Farson's elusive document, allegedly titled : The East End Murderer: I knew Him".

As I remarked to Howells and Skinner in 1986, that titled sounds like a headline from a newspaper. Not a privately published pamphlet.

In fact, I agree with both you, Jonathan, and Adam, about the illogic of a medical man breaching the privacy of an allegedly "Sick" family member, recently dead. And of his staunchly respectable family.

I hope you and Chris can look past your respective corrective comments, and help advance research on this thread, exploiting your undoubted talents.

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Chris]

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.

I must admit I can't really understand what you mean by this scenario. I'd be interested if you could expand on it. In particular, what do you mean by "this Australian connection", if you're not thinking of something already involving Lionel Druitt?

[Adam Went]

Chris:

There's not really anything behind my comment about "this Australian connection", I think Farson felt that the document was linked to Druitt all along and it was just a matter of trying to figure out which one of the Druitt family living in Australia could and would have written it. As I said before, it might well have started out as a hopeful connection that ended up being a dead end.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Let us look at the specimen in a different way.

A family is desperately trying to hide a dreadful secret about a beloved member who has committed suicide (apparently) in the wake of a hideous series of public horrors. Subsequently a pamphlet appears four years or so later in a distant part of the empire the family lives in. The pamphlet boasts that the author knew a well-known fiend. At that time a brother of the beloved member of the family who died is living in or near the site of the appearance of that pamphlet.

That is the summation of the issue of THE EAST END MURDERER: I KNEW HIM by "Mr. Fell" (Dr. Gideon?).

I agree that it makes little sense for a member of a closed mouth family like the Druitts to publicly open his mouth in a pamphlet and blab that "My brother Monty killed all five!!!" Lionel would not have been welcomed back into the family if such was the case - he died back in Wimborne. Apparently he was loved by his family.

But aren't we jumping the gun. The pamphlet was never found (it may not have been written). If it was, why is Lionel supposed to be the author. Recently somebody pointed out that the publication of the pamphlet in Australia in 1892 could be associated with Frederick Deeming who was being tried in Melbourne for killing his second wife in January 1892. Deeming's trial was in April 1892. He was hanged in May 1892. One of his alias was "Drewen" or "Druin". The pamphlet might be about him, as he was widely suspected of being the Ripper.

Or, if Lionel wrote it, he may have been voicing his suspicions of Deeming or someone else because he was fighting suspicions directed at Montague.

I doubt if the pamphlet (if it was published) survives - but one never knows.
But we cannot just assume that it was about Monty. Hey, it could be about Ostrog or Kosminsky.

Jeff

[Johnr]

A Good Point Jeff.

I agree with you Jeff.
The title of the elusive"Dandenong Document" -'The East End Murderer: I Knew Him' allegedly seen in Australia in 1890,and allegedly written by someone with a name like 'Drewett, Druitt or Drewery", sounds like something from a newspaper. And I agree there is no proof it implicated Montague Druitt.

But it is my opinion too, Adam, that a Doctor like Doctor Lionel Druitt, from a Dorset family proud of its three hundred year connection with medicine, would be extremely unlikely to openly pen such a document.

Actually, in 1890, Dr Lionel Druitt, in country Victoria had some very bad experiences in that country town, so much so, that he up and left , taking his wife and child, a long long way away when his wife was in a state of advanced pregnancy with their second daughter!!!

The Dandenong Document should it exist, will have nothing to do with Druitt, rather much more to do with Frederick Deeming, who encouraged wild speculation that he was the Ripper. In my opinion.
The local press, had him guilty before the trial started, and speculated on his guilt throughout the whole trial! Hardly British Justice.

My much-vaunted, and still not written, articles will provide several extraordinary coincidences where other headlines in the press provide remarkable ingredients of the title and story of the 'Dandenong Document'.
Rather, suggesting the author had absorbed lots of disparate articles on JTR.

There will be no smoking gun, but it will be interesting!

JOHN RUFFELS.