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Jack the Oxonian?
To Roy
I agree. Strong shades.
I think the Vicar was exasperated by the journalist calling the Ripper evil, and so on, and the cleric wanted to partially defend the un-named montie by saying that he was ill -- and went to to the East End to help the Unfortunates.
Realizing he should not have said this, the Vicar hastily retreated to the fictitious bit from the Major's book -- Jack had been a doctor. He could not simply say was a doctor, full stop, because his written version had said he was a man of 'good position', and a doctor-surgeon is a great one.
Later of course, Sims who had trashed the Vicar, adopted this very same element: an ex-surgeon.
A Jack without family or patients.
He was a great, great writer, Tom Cullen, but one of his mistakes, with a long legacy, is that he accepted [his rival] Farson's all-too-hasty assumption that Macnaghten made errors of memory in the 'Aberconway' version -- without pausing to consider that the same source does not make the same errors in his memoirs of a decade later.
As a Marxist it did not interest Cullen that Druitt was a barrister, rather than a doctor, the point being that he was an Oxonian gent and potentially influenced, like other graduates by the Rev. Samuel Barnett's sermons at the uni, to go and help the poor in the East End.
If we compare what we know of Druitt -- eg. not much -- with what the Vicar says then you get the following bits of data:
VICAR'S JACK: 'The Whitechurch Murders'
1. a man of good position (a barrister and teacher are 'good' positions).
2. an Anglican -- a Gentile.
3. an otherwise unblemished character.
4. suffered from a mental illness which drove him to repeatedly commit bestial murder.
5. at one time a surgeon, but no longer.
6. died shortly after the last victim.
7. the last victim is Kelly in 1888, not Coles in 1891.
8. had enough time and with the wherewithal to make a confession to a clergyman.
9. not a resident of the East End.
10. he went there to help prostitutes.
11. his crimes, and confession and death are nothing to do with the police.
A) TRUE OF DRUITT
1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8., 9.
B) MIGHT BE TRUE OF DRUITT
8. (eg. actually making a confession), 10., 11.
C) FICTION?
5., the title of the piece, (eg. Whitechurch) that the Vicar is from the North, that the Vicar's name reveals the murderer's, that the Vicar did not hear the confession himself.
My theory is that the Vicar heard the confession himself, as Sims bluntly puts it, and that Montie made him make a solemn vow to reveal the truth in a decade. He agreed, and felt honour-bound to do it.
Later when he met Macnaghten, the latter smoothly convinced him,for everybody's sake, to make the revelation a candid mixture of fact and fiction which partly suited the cleric who did not -- and does not -- want to reveal that the murderer took his own life.
In anticipation of this fact-into-fiction tale arriving on the [approx.] tenth anniversary of Montie's funeral, Macnaghten got in first with his sly own mixture of fact-into-fiction. He experimented with it in 1894, but that document was never sent and never read only archived for insurance purposes.
Then came the 1898/9 deadline and Mac orchestrated the Griffiths-Sims pincer.
How well did this shell game work? Hardly anybody takes the Vicar source seriously in 2013. Some believe it is a hoax (and they ought to know).
To Roy
I agree. Strong shades.
I think the Vicar was exasperated by the journalist calling the Ripper evil, and so on, and the cleric wanted to partially defend the un-named montie by saying that he was ill -- and went to to the East End to help the Unfortunates.
Realizing he should not have said this, the Vicar hastily retreated to the fictitious bit from the Major's book -- Jack had been a doctor. He could not simply say was a doctor, full stop, because his written version had said he was a man of 'good position', and a doctor-surgeon is a great one.
Later of course, Sims who had trashed the Vicar, adopted this very same element: an ex-surgeon.
A Jack without family or patients.
He was a great, great writer, Tom Cullen, but one of his mistakes, with a long legacy, is that he accepted [his rival] Farson's all-too-hasty assumption that Macnaghten made errors of memory in the 'Aberconway' version -- without pausing to consider that the same source does not make the same errors in his memoirs of a decade later.
As a Marxist it did not interest Cullen that Druitt was a barrister, rather than a doctor, the point being that he was an Oxonian gent and potentially influenced, like other graduates by the Rev. Samuel Barnett's sermons at the uni, to go and help the poor in the East End.
If we compare what we know of Druitt -- eg. not much -- with what the Vicar says then you get the following bits of data:
VICAR'S JACK: 'The Whitechurch Murders'
1. a man of good position (a barrister and teacher are 'good' positions).
2. an Anglican -- a Gentile.
3. an otherwise unblemished character.
4. suffered from a mental illness which drove him to repeatedly commit bestial murder.
5. at one time a surgeon, but no longer.
6. died shortly after the last victim.
7. the last victim is Kelly in 1888, not Coles in 1891.
8. had enough time and with the wherewithal to make a confession to a clergyman.
9. not a resident of the East End.
10. he went there to help prostitutes.
11. his crimes, and confession and death are nothing to do with the police.
A) TRUE OF DRUITT
1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8., 9.
B) MIGHT BE TRUE OF DRUITT
8. (eg. actually making a confession), 10., 11.
C) FICTION?
5., the title of the piece, (eg. Whitechurch) that the Vicar is from the North, that the Vicar's name reveals the murderer's, that the Vicar did not hear the confession himself.
My theory is that the Vicar heard the confession himself, as Sims bluntly puts it, and that Montie made him make a solemn vow to reveal the truth in a decade. He agreed, and felt honour-bound to do it.
Later when he met Macnaghten, the latter smoothly convinced him,for everybody's sake, to make the revelation a candid mixture of fact and fiction which partly suited the cleric who did not -- and does not -- want to reveal that the murderer took his own life.
In anticipation of this fact-into-fiction tale arriving on the [approx.] tenth anniversary of Montie's funeral, Macnaghten got in first with his sly own mixture of fact-into-fiction. He experimented with it in 1894, but that document was never sent and never read only archived for insurance purposes.
Then came the 1898/9 deadline and Mac orchestrated the Griffiths-Sims pincer.
How well did this shell game work? Hardly anybody takes the Vicar source seriously in 2013. Some believe it is a hoax (and they ought to know).
)
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