Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

[RivkahChaya]

My example of Herb Baumeister was actually meant to show how rare the exceptions are. "Here's the only one I can come up with." Not to mention, he had other things going on in his life, like his business and marriage failing, after a couple of decades of success as an upper-middle class community leader type; his wife said he was showing signs of depression before he came under suspicion, and that might actually be why he got sloppy in his disposals, and how he came under suspicion.

He may have been headed for depression and suicide as a result of financial ruin and the collapse of his facade, and not so much facing what he had done as a criminal; that they all came down on him at once was a coincidence.

Actually, when you get down to it, even if Druitt were JTR, that probably had less to do with his suicide than his getting fired does. Really, we have no idea what the "private information" was. It may have been circular; if it was someone in the family saying "Oh my gawd, I hope it doesn't mean anything that the murders stopped when Montie died," then we have an argument predicated on itself, which is no argument at all. However, Mac might not have known that it was circular. He just might have known that the family were all saying "I hope not, but...."

[Ben]

What about Mungo Ireland? Never named in any newspaper, or public record, but pretty much accepted as being guilty of the Jack the Stripper murders.

There is no general acceptance that Ireland was Jack the Stripper, and as such he can't really be compared to Druitt (who is even less accepted as being JTR than Ireland is of being JTS!). Baumeister is interesting, but unlike the proposed Druitt-the-ripper, there could have been no question in his mind that the game was up. He was being actively investigated by the police as the prime suspect and there was no realistic avoidance of imminent identification as a serial killer. The same was true of Leonard Lake, who committed suicide IN custody.

Macnaghten speculated that Druitt killed himself because his brain "gave way" after his "awful glut" in Miller's Court, which is very far removed from what we know of actual serial killer behaviour.

Whatever incriminating evidence Macnaghten claimed to have destroyed, it clearly didn't impress Abberline, who believed there was nothing beyond the timing of Druitt's suicide "to incriminate him". Unless, of course, Macnaghten deliberately withheld information from the most senior "on the ground" investigator at the time of the murders, but Abberline himself considered this "next to impossible". I tend to agree.

All the best,
Ben

[RivkahChaya]

We can't trust in the accuracy of memoirs......what I've been complaining about continuously, but you can't convince everyone, especially those who rely on these writings for their own particular theories.

A good deal of my four years of college prep English classes in high school was how to correctly cite sources, and how to vet sources in the first place-- and even how to quote a questionable source, while noting that it is questionable.

When I got to college, we got more on distinguishing good sources from bad sources, but we were expected to know how to properly cite things. My college officially used the Chicago manual of style (my high school has used the APA, and it was annoying not to be able to do it from memory, but you could get a cheap used copy from the bookstore), and that was the default style, unless a professor specified something else in the syllabus.

People I know who teach high school now say they are fighting a battle to convince people that Wikipedia is not an acceptable source. But they are also fighting a battle against students CPing citations from internet sources, and mixing styles. It's a dead giveaway that the cite was cribbed, and it's just bad form. Students don't understand why they lose points "Because I cited it!"

[Wickerman]

Well, that's usually the difference between memoirs and autobiography.

The distinction is not so clear in the works we often debate here.

I was taught not to cite memoirs for facts and dates, but that it is acceptable to do so with autobiographies, and typically, autobiographies are written with the assistance of editors and fact-checkers, and contain indices, while memoirs are not, and while there may be an index, you can't expect it, and should not cite a memoir for anything other than personal recollection, how the subject felt about something, and soforth.

We can't trust in the accuracy of memoirs......what I've been complaining about continuously, but you can't convince everyone, especially those who rely on these writings for their own particular theories.

Thankyou for that...
Regards, Jon S.

[RivkahChaya]

Well, that's usually the difference between memoirs and autobiography. I was taught not to cite memoirs for facts and dates, but that it is acceptable to do so with autobiographies, and typically, autobiographies are written with the assistance of editors and fact-checkers, and contain indices, while memoirs are not, and while there may be an index, you can't expect it, and should not cite a memoir for anything other than personal recollection, how the subject felt about something, and soforth.

[Wickerman]

Do we know he was working from memory? Couldn't he just have looked up what he wrote 19 years earlier and copied it? that makes it no more reliable than something CP'd from a blog.

No we don't know if he was working from memory, probably not advisable to do that in any memoirs. The mind often plays tricks as we age.

Regards, Jon S.

[RivkahChaya]

Yes Colin, I was talking about consistency not corroboration, I should have made that clear. When our source writes a paragraph 19 years after his earlier comment on the subject they should be consistent.

Do we know he was working from memory? Couldn't he just have looked up what he wrote 19 years earlier and copied it? that makes it no more reliable than something CP'd from a blog.

[Wickerman]

Yes Colin, I was talking about consistency not corroboration, I should have made that clear. When our source writes a paragraph 19 years after his earlier comment on the subject they should be consistent.
I only wish we could say the same about Anderson's memoirs.

Regards, Jon S.

[Bridewell]

I do speak with Jonathan, and have not forgotten the impressive work of Andy Spallek. That said, I am also not in favor of believing memoirs in isolation, meaning, if a memoir was my only source for a theory then the theory might be on shaky ground.
In this rare instance Mac.'s memoir supports his Memoranda, so on this point we might be able to give some credence to his words.

Regards, Jon S.

Hi Jon,

Sir Melville MacNaghten supporting his own account isn't corroboration. It's consistency, but that's all it is.

[Wickerman]

Hello Jon.

"There is a little more to it than rumor, if you are prepared to accept that Macnaghten wrote the truth in his memoirs."

Hmm, you must speak to Hainsworth.

Cheers.
LC

I do speak with Jonathan, and have not forgotten the impressive work of Andy Spallek. That said, I am also not in favor of believing memoirs in isolation, meaning, if a memoir was my only source for a theory then the theory might be on shaky ground.
In this rare instance Mac.'s memoir supports his Memoranda, so on this point we might be able to give some credence to his words.

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

Jonathan

Hello Jon.

"There is a little more to it than rumor, if you are prepared to accept that Macnaghten wrote the truth in his memoirs."

Hmm, you must speak to Hainsworth.

Cheers.
LC

[Roy Corduroy]

The family secret got out, if we are to believe.

Roy

[Wickerman]

Hi Ben,



(Druitt's suicide at that time)

But Macnaghten said private information indicated Druitt's own family suspected him. That is a provocative statement.

I think its a given he felt he had an inside scoop on this. Family secrets. The compass points between Mac and the Druitts have been mapped out pretty well over the years.

Were the rumors worth a hoot?

Roy

There is a little more to it than rumor, if you are prepared to accept that Macnaghten wrote the truth in his memoirs.

"Although, as I shall endeavour to show in this chapter, the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November i888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer."

"Certain facts" suggests more than rumor, you will agree rumors are not facts.
Once a person is dead, if certain facts came to the attention of police while Mac. was Assistant Com. then the police are not at liberty to make such facts public. Every accused is allowed a trial, and as we cannot try a corpse the information was likely just filed away.

Interestingly, Swanson in 1895 declared that in his opinion the man responsible for these crimes "is now dead".

I say 'interestingly' because we can accept that after 1910 Swanson, if never having heard of Kosminski since being incarcerated, may have thought he had died. But, if he truly though Kosminski was dead as far back as 1895 we might ask what else was Swanson in error about.
Kosminski only died in 1919.

Unless, as I have suggested elsewhere, Kosminski was Anderson's suspect, not Swanson's. The 'marginalia' is only providing background for Anderson's suspicions, nowhere in his private life did Swanson ever hint at who he thought the killer was.

Regards, Jon S.

[RivkahChaya]

The key word is "must." He did not say that it never happens. His point was that the idea of a serial killer with no self-control whatsoever, who would continue to leave bodies even as the law closed in is outdated. Certainly, some serial killers stopped because they were incarcerated for other crimes. That happened to John Wayne Gacy. But others did take a hiatus, for whatever reason. Gary Ridgway ("The Green River Killer") just stopped. Jeffrey Dahmer killed one person, then took a very long break before his next victim. Rodney Alcala killed in spates, and moved around, and was incarcerated for other crimes, but his moves, and his incarcerations don't match up with his spates well enough to account for them. There were personal and emotional factors, and probably financial ones, too.

For serial killers (admittedly, JTR was not one), whose game is not so much killing itself, but playing with the body afterward, that can be an expensive hobby, so the killer's financial resources and employment affect his killing record-- that is very true with Jeffrey Dahmer.

There is reason to believe the Axe-Man of New Orleans moved away, but that doesn't account for his stopping, per se, because there were no new axe murders in the area he was believed to be. He was a terrorist killer like the Zodiac, and maybe he had a beef with New Orleans, for some reason.

It may sound a little sick to say it this way, but for some serial killers, murder is their hobby. It might also be their fetish. People outgrow hobbies, and lose libido as they age, and so some serial killers may just grow up, so to speak. I don't want to sound like I'm excusing the behavior, I'm just pointing out that there's a peak age for violent behavior, and that's true whether it's being a professional boxer, or being Jack the Ripper.

[Observer]

Absolutely, Rivkah, and it evidently appealed to Macnaghten for that reason. Unfortunately for any modern-day "Druittist", there is absolutely no reason to suppose that the ripper series ended in the offender's suicide. There is no historical precedent for such behaviour, and I know of no other serial case that terminated in the killer's suicide before he had a chance to be apprehended and identified. The reality, of course, is that the real killer was more than likely to have been perfectly capable of stopping, or at least putting on hold his murderous desires for a considerable period of time. The notion that the killer must have died, been incarcerated or moved away is a very outdated one.

All the best,
Ben

Oh no? What about Mungo Ireland? Never named in any newspaper, or public record, but pretty much accepted as being guilty of the Jack the Stripper murders.

Regards

Observer