Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

[RivkahChaya]

Do we know what sort of religious person Druitt was?

I never really thought about it before, but now that I do, it seems a little odd that he would go to his death without confessing in his suicide note, if he were the Ripper.

I suppose "private information" could be a priest, or vicar, going to the police, and saying "I can't break the seal of the confessional, but I can tell you Jack the Ripper is dead, and you don't need to worry anymore." Could a priest do that? An Anglican priest?

Of course, would a priest of any blush grant absolution to someone who did not intend to give himself over to the authorities. And, then, someone who cared about his immortal soul mightn't commit suicide in the first place, no matter how crazy he thought he was, especially if he could confess to a crime, and be executed, after being absolved.

Still, even non-religious people sometimes make death-bed confessions. Not as often as they do in the movies, but it does happen. It might happen more if people with things to confess, realized they were dying, and had someone there to confess to, which isn't always the case. Anyway, Druitt did know when he was going to did, and did have a chance to confess, of sorts, because he left a note.

Does anyone else think that if he bothered to leave a note, he would confess to the murders, if he had, in fact, committed them?

[Jonathan H]

Whitechurch?

We really know nothing about Montague Druitt's inner life, as nothing has survived.

We can see something of the outline of his respectable, middle-class outer life: surgeon's son, Winchester, Oxford, successful barrister, assistant school master, country cricketer, serial killer, etc.

He was born into an Anglican family and his cousin, Charles, was a clergyman, eventually a Vicar in Dorset. The leak about the allegation of Montie being the Ripper frist emerged from Dorset in 1891.

In 1899 an un-named Abglican Vicar -- suspposedly from the North of England though no county is specified -- will try and publish a story about the real Jack which is openly a mixture of fact and fiction.

He asks that his name not be given as it will give away the name of the murderer.

The newspaper claims that the cleric called his tale: 'The Whitechurch Murders ...' Charles Druitt's parish was called Whitchurch.

The Vicar's Ripper was a man of good position who had enough time after the Kelly murder to make a confession to a priest, and that he died soon after that, and was never the subject of police interest. He was also 'at one time a surgeon' or is this a fictitious bit?

That all matches Druitt better than the Griffiths-Sims' 'drowned doctor' competing with the Vicar yet we know the latter is definitely a variation of Montie.

Here is the bombshell piece placed on these boards by Chris Scott in 2008:

Western Mail
19 January 1899

WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?

We have received (says the Daily Mail) from a clergyman of the Church of England, now a North Country vicar, an interesting communication with reference to the great criminal mystery of our times - that enshrouding the perpetration of the series of crimes which have come to be known as the "Jack the Ripper" murders. The identity of the murderer is as unsolved as it was while the blood of the victims was yet wet upon the pavements. Certainly Major Arthur Griffiths, in his new work on "Mysteries of Police and Crime," suggests that the police believe the assassin to have been a doctor, bordering on insanity, whose body was found floating in the Thames soon after the last crime of the series; but as the major also mentions that this man was one of three known homidical lunatics against whom the police "held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion," that conjectural explanation does not appear to count for much by itself.
Our correspondent the vicar now writes:-
"I received information in professional confidence, with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification.
The murderer was a man of good position and otherwise unblemished character, who suffered from epileptic mania, and is long since deceased.
I must ask you not to give my name, as it might lead to identification"
meaning the identification of the perpetrator of the crimes. We thought at first the vicar was at fault in believing that ten years had passed yet since the last murder of the series, for there were other somewhat similar crimes in 1889. But, on referring again to major Griffiths's book, we find he states that the last "Jack the Ripper" murder was that in Miller's Court on November 9, 1888 - a confirmation of the vicar's sources of information. The vicar enclosed a narrative, which he called "The Whitechurch Murders - Solution of a London Mystery." This he described as "substantial truth under fictitious form." "Proof for obvious reasons impossible - under seal of confession," he added in reply to an inquiry from us.
Failing to see how any good purpose could be served by publishing substantial truth in fictitious form, we sent a representative North to see the vicar, to endeavour to ascertain which parts of the narrative were actual facts. But the vicar was not to be persuaded, and all that our reporter could learn was that the rev. gentleman appears to know with certainty the identity of the most terrible figure in the criminal annals of our times, and that the vicar does not intend to let anyone else into the secret.
The murderer died, the vicar states, very shortly after committing the last murder. The vicar obtained his information from a brother clergyman, to whom a confession was made - by whom the vicar would not give even the most guarded hint. The only other item which a lengthy chat with the vicar could elicit was that the murderer was a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End - eventually his victims; and that the assassin was at one time a surgeon.'

Sims, a few days later, asserted it was the Vicar himself who received the confession, not a brother clergyman.

Who told him that?

[Mayerling]

We really know nothing about Montague Druitt's inner life, as nothing has survived.

We can see something of the outline of his respectable, middle-class outer life: surgeon's son, Winchester, Oxford, successful barrister, assistant school master, country cricketer, serial killer, etc.

He was born into an Anglican family and his cousin, Charles, was a clergyman, eventually a Vicar in Dorset. The leak about the allegation of Montie being the Ripper frist emerged from Dorset in 1891.

In 1899 an un-named Abglican Vicar -- suspposedly from the North of England though no county is specified -- will try and publish a story about the real Jack which is openly a mixture of fact and fiction.

He asks that his name not be given as it will give away the name of the murderer.

The newspaper claims that the cleric called his tale: 'The Whitechurch Murders ...' Charles Druitt's parish was called Whitchurch.

The Vicar's Ripper was a man of good position who had enough time after the Kelly murder to make a confession to a priest, and that he died soon after that, and was never the subject of police interest. He was also 'at one time a surgeon' or is this a fictitious bit?

That all matches Druitt better than the Griffiths-Sims' 'drowned doctor' competing with the Vicar yet we know the latter is definitely a variation of Montie.

Here is the bombshell piece placed on these boards by Chris Scott in 2008:

Western Mail
19 January 1899

WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?

We have received (says the Daily Mail) from a clergyman of the Church of England, now a North Country vicar, an interesting communication with reference to the great criminal mystery of our times - that enshrouding the perpetration of the series of crimes which have come to be known as the "Jack the Ripper" murders. The identity of the murderer is as unsolved as it was while the blood of the victims was yet wet upon the pavements. Certainly Major Arthur Griffiths, in his new work on "Mysteries of Police and Crime," suggests that the police believe the assassin to have been a doctor, bordering on insanity, whose body was found floating in the Thames soon after the last crime of the series; but as the major also mentions that this man was one of three known homidical lunatics against whom the police "held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion," that conjectural explanation does not appear to count for much by itself.
Our correspondent the vicar now writes:-
"I received information in professional confidence, with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification.
The murderer was a man of good position and otherwise unblemished character, who suffered from epileptic mania, and is long since deceased.
I must ask you not to give my name, as it might lead to identification"
meaning the identification of the perpetrator of the crimes. We thought at first the vicar was at fault in believing that ten years had passed yet since the last murder of the series, for there were other somewhat similar crimes in 1889. But, on referring again to major Griffiths's book, we find he states that the last "Jack the Ripper" murder was that in Miller's Court on November 9, 1888 - a confirmation of the vicar's sources of information. The vicar enclosed a narrative, which he called "The Whitechurch Murders - Solution of a London Mystery." This he described as "substantial truth under fictitious form." "Proof for obvious reasons impossible - under seal of confession," he added in reply to an inquiry from us.
Failing to see how any good purpose could be served by publishing substantial truth in fictitious form, we sent a representative North to see the vicar, to endeavour to ascertain which parts of the narrative were actual facts. But the vicar was not to be persuaded, and all that our reporter could learn was that the rev. gentleman appears to know with certainty the identity of the most terrible figure in the criminal annals of our times, and that the vicar does not intend to let anyone else into the secret.
The murderer died, the vicar states, very shortly after committing the last murder. The vicar obtained his information from a brother clergyman, to whom a confession was made - by whom the vicar would not give even the most guarded hint. The only other item which a lengthy chat with the vicar could elicit was that the murderer was a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End - eventually his victims; and that the assassin was at one time a surgeon.'

Sims, a few days later, asserted it was the Vicar himself who received the confession, not a brother clergyman.

Who told him that?

Hi all,

I really don't know where to begin, but I have always wondered about how any respectable people (in that super-respectability loving Victorian Age) would be willing, even in confidence, to mention feelings about their dear departed relative Monty.

Even today, I notice that while people will mention relations to certain criminals at the drop of a hat (Jessie James has descendants who admit to it) it is because there are elements to the story of the criminal that make one pause a little when considering him or her. One hundred and thirty one years of western myth building about Jessie as a "Robin Hood" for ex-Confederates helps out with his cold-bloodedness.

Similarly other people will mention a connection quickly and then drop it or show a harsh defense against further comment. Dr. Crippen, for example. He actually has partial defenders because his victim & wife Belle was so mean to him. But check out the "Find-a-Grave" website for Crippen's son Otto (from the marriage before Crippen's marriage to Belle) and you will find that the Crippen family (which is deep into geneology) is touchy when talking to strangers about their family connections.

In my own lifetime I have met people who are connected to old crimes. Including myself. When my mother was a little girl she accompanied her mother (my grandmother Anna) to see Anna's doctor, Dr. William Hammond. Hammond (after examining Anna) put my mother on his knee and said that when he was a boy he sat on the knee of President Lincoln. It seems Hammond (who died in the early 1940s) was the son of Dr. Charles Hammond, once Surgeon - General of the U.S., and when Lincoln attended army reviews of the Army of the Potomac, Dr. Hammond and his son were in the carriage with Lincoln and the President put young William Hammond on his knee to let the boy get a better view of the review. In any case, it puts me three lives away from Abraham Lincoln...and (ironically) four lives away from John Wilkes Booth.

But I have no trouble boasting or mentioning that - Lincoln was a good guy, as was Dr. William Hammond. And neither were my relatives. Had Hammond mentioned he once was held on the shoulder of Booth or Lewis Powell to see a parade, I don't know if I would have mentioned it, and I would have wondered why he would have.

I once knew a woman named Rosie Frank in Manhattan, when she was in her 80s (this was in the 1970s) who knew the four desperadoes or torpedoes or killers who shot and killed the gambler Herman Rosenthal in 1912 outside the Hotel Metropole in Manhattan. She knew "Gyp the Blood" and "Whitey Lewis" because they attended social dances she went to. She said "They were nice boys". I'm sure Rosenthal would have given her an argument about that. But she only saw them socially, and they were not relatives. She had nothing to lose telling me she liked them.

My point is that if the party that is subject to the connection is not a family member, the person commenting on them will find nothing negative to say about them. Ditto if that party was (like Lincoln) admired by most people today. It is just odd to think that a bunch of Monty's relatives (in this case a cousin who was an Anglican Vicar) would be willing to admit to such a connection as to claim Monty was the most notoriously unknown killer of the 19th Century.

Wouldn't it have made more sense for the family to have pointed away from themselves to some isolated figure who had no family to defend him and who was disliked, and had been in the East End in the Autumn of 1888? I would think so.
Jeff

[Jonathan H]

But if the Vicar is a Druitt relative (or a buffer for the family) he is not pointing towards himself, or them, except by trusting in the 'Daily Mail' not to reveal his name -- which they didn't.

He says the Ripper was a former surgeon and does not say how he died.

He says that he is openly mixing fact and fiction, to both reveal and conceal, exactly what Mac does anonymously via cronies -- except covertly.

In his own memoirs Mac tells a tale much closer to the Vicar than the one he had Sims propagate to the public.

[RivkahChaya]

Even today, I notice that while people will mention relations to certain criminals at the drop of a hat (Jessie James has descendants who admit to it) it is because there are elements to the story of the criminal that make one pause a little when considering him or her. One hundred and thirty one years of western myth building about Jessie as a "Robin Hood" for ex-Confederates helps out with his cold-bloodedness.

Jesse James is a special case, and has been from the time of his death. Bob Ford basically executed him by shooting him in the back, in his own home, and without warning, IIRC, under the guise of helping him hang a picture. That was considered a dirty tactic, no matter what James had done, and it got him a lot of sympathy right off the bat.

It's sort of like what happens when someone who is nonetheless guilty is abused by the police during interrogation. They usually get a lot of public support.

Residents of southern states who still seem to think the Confederacy will rise again, and were having big parties last year to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Confederacy are something else entirely. The semis I see on the roads all the time with the Confederate flags on the front give me the vapors. I don't think anyone ought to be able to fly the flag of a former enemy nation (unless it is a reconciled ally, and correctly displayed below the US flag), 1st amendment or not, and don't give me that it isn't any different from displaying a Puerto Rican flag. (Someone did actually say that to me-- they probably meant "Mexican," and didn't even know the difference.) Puerto Rico is essentially a state. And when I say "fly the flag," I mean just that. There is a difference between flying a flag, and displaying one in a museum, and anyone who claims not to understand the difference is being disingenuous.

[caz]

Do we know what sort of religious person Druitt was?

I never really thought about it before, but now that I do, it seems a little odd that he would go to his death without confessing in his suicide note, if he were the Ripper.

I suppose "private information" could be a priest, or vicar, going to the police, and saying "I can't break the seal of the confessional, but I can tell you Jack the Ripper is dead, and you don't need to worry anymore." Could a priest do that? An Anglican priest?

Of course, would a priest of any blush grant absolution to someone who did not intend to give himself over to the authorities. And, then, someone who cared about his immortal soul mightn't commit suicide in the first place, no matter how crazy he thought he was, especially if he could confess to a crime, and be executed, after being absolved.

Still, even non-religious people sometimes make death-bed confessions. Not as often as they do in the movies, but it does happen. It might happen more if people with things to confess, realized they were dying, and had someone there to confess to, which isn't always the case. Anyway, Druitt did know when he was going to did, and did have a chance to confess, of sorts, because he left a note.

Does anyone else think that if he bothered to leave a note, he would confess to the murders, if he had, in fact, committed them?

Hi Rivkah,

I do have trouble with the fact that he bothered to leave a note for his brother, explaining his fear of "going like mother", if it was all a lie and he was feeling suicidal after committing the murders. It doesn't seem to make much sense that he would have confessed the truth to another family member - this vicar of Jonathan's - presumably hoping for some peace in the afterlife, having lied in writing to his brother, and used his mother's mental illness to come up with the lie.

Love,

Caz
X

[Robert]

If someone from the family did know...would there be any religious scruples about allowing him to be buried in consecrated ground?

[lynn cates]

north

Hello Robert. Good point. Normally, such people were buried north side. But the clause, "whilst of unsound mind" would allow a normal burial.

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

Was he buried in consecrated ground? I thought suicides couldn't be unless they were completely fruit loops, which I don't think Druitt was, at least not yet.

[caz]

He asks that his name not be given as it will give away the name of the murderer.

The newspaper claims that the cleric called his tale: 'The Whitechurch Murders ...' Charles Druitt's parish was called Whitchurch.

Hi Jonathan,

That's a bit of a leap isn't it? If the Daily Mail sent a representative to see the cleric in question, in his parish of Whitchurch, and his name was Charles Druitt, then he would effectively have given away enough information to the newspaper to allow them to ferret out the name the whole world wanted to know. Is that what you are suggesting? Somehow I doubt that happened.

Surely the vicar's point in asking the Daily Mail not to reveal his name was not that it gave anything away to the newspaper itself, and would therefore have given as much away to the general reading public, but that someone closely associated with the vicar and his parish might have worked out who had made the confession. There's a world of difference between the two.

Why would the vicar himself have given an almighty hint by calling his yarn 'The Whitechurch Murders' if his north country parish was Whitchurch and he didn't want anyone (outside of the Daily Mail) to make that connection? Especially if he shared his surname with the man who had confessed to the murders?

The vicar clearly meant the Whitechapel Murders but used the word church instead, as if he treated the two as interchangeable. Perhaps not so surprising for a man in his business, given that St. Mary Matfelon was literally the white church, or chapel, after which the area of Whitechapel was named.

Love,

Caz
X

[Roy Corduroy]

A fork in the road

Does anyone else think that if he bothered to leave a note, he would confess to the murders, if he had, in fact, committed them?

I see your point.

But if he was a psychopath, his actions don't have to make sense. He could -

a) confess the murders to a clergyman
b) write a humdrum suicide note to his brother

and c) d) & e) too.

Whenver a priestly confession comes up, I think of the Alfred Hitchcock movie (click to see trailer)

Roy

[Robert]

Hi Lynn

Yes, he was OK from the suicide point of view - as far as the officials were concerned. But I wondered, what if someone in the family knew or else thought he knew that Monty was both sane and a killer. Such a person would have had to be extremely scrupulous to object to the burial, though.

[Mayerling]

Jesse James is a special case, and has been from the time of his death. Bob Ford basically executed him by shooting him in the back, in his own home, and without warning, IIRC, under the guise of helping him hang a picture. That was considered a dirty tactic, no matter what James had done, and it got him a lot of sympathy right off the bat.

It's sort of like what happens when someone who is nonetheless guilty is abused by the police during interrogation. They usually get a lot of public support.

Residents of southern states who still seem to think the Confederacy will rise again, and were having big parties last year to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Confederacy are something else entirely. The semis I see on the roads all the time with the Confederate flags on the front give me the vapors. I don't think anyone ought to be able to fly the flag of a former enemy nation (unless it is a reconciled ally, and correctly displayed below the US flag), 1st amendment or not, and don't give me that it isn't any different from displaying a Puerto Rican flag. (Someone did actually say that to me-- they probably meant "Mexican," and didn't even know the difference.) Puerto Rico is essentially a state. And when I say "fly the flag," I mean just that. There is a difference between flying a flag, and displaying one in a museum, and anyone who claims not to understand the difference is being disingenuous.

Hi Rivkah,

I did forget that being shot in the back by Bob Ford created a wave of sympathy for Jesse, as did (at an earlier date) an attack by U.S. authorities and Pinkerton Detectives on his mother's home, burning the home, injuring his mother (who lost a limb) and killing a younger brother of his). Federal authorities were as ham handed in the Grant Administration as they have been in recent decades.

Let us not get involved about the Puerto Rican flag business. While I agree with your point about the symbolism of Confederate flags, to say Puerto Rican is "essentially a state" raises a lot of hackles among "Commonwealth" and "Independence" supporters there.

I still cannot figure out why a family (eminently respectable) would start giving such explosively damaging information to Scotland Yard. I can only think of two possibilities: 1) The information to MacNaughten was not from the Druitt family at all (but this seems contrary to what he says); 2) Whoever it was giving the information to Scotland Yard was actually protecting the real suspect (who would have had to be alive in 1894).

Montague's brother perhaps? Or one of his cousins, like Lionel (why did he go to Australia?)?

There is another curious story I know of, which I may write about one day.
In 1896 a promising young English short story writer died in Paris. He is barely recalled anymore. His name was Hubert Crackenthorpe. His stories were influenced by the "French Naturalist" school of writing, championed by Emile Zola. Many of his stories deal with whores or lower class people.

Crackenthorpe drowned in the Seine River in 1896. The details are murky.
He either fell into the River during some excessively rainy weather, or killed himself, or even was murdered by some mugger. Anyway it turned out that Hubert's wife was divorcing him, and he was having an affair with the sister of Richard La Gallienne, a noted man of letters in his own right.

The following year Hubert's brother Darryl Crackenthorpe (a career diplomat in Britain) got married to Ina Sickles, a woman of American and Spanish descent. The courtship had been going on during the period of the coroner's investigation into Hubert's death, and Darryl used his influence to get a verdict of accidental drowning (although Hubert's friends, like the poet Ernest Dowson, did not believe it was an accident). The reason given since then for this haste is that Darryl Crackenthorpe did not want the scandal of his brother's death as a suicide to destroy his diplomatic career.

There is a problem with this though. Ina Sickle did marry Darryl Crackenthorpe (and it was a successful marriage), and Darryl had a good diplomatic career (he was British Ambassador to the Central American Republics in the 1920s), but he had more scandalous material in his background - concerning his bride.

Ina's father was a Civil War hero, General Daniel Sickles, who had also been a diplomat (in Britain in the 1850s) and a U.S. Congressman twice. But he was a notorious scamp in many ways, having been Minister to Spain in the 1870s, and doing his best to forment a war so we could seize Cuba as a colony. Sickles was also, at an earlier date, responsible for shooting to death Philip Barton Keys, son of Francis Scott Keys of "Star Spangled Banner " fame. Barton Keys had committed adultery with Sickles first wife, so Sickles shot him down near the White House in Washington, D.C. He was acquitted after a sprited trial in 1859 due to the use of the so-called "unwritten law" about shooting adulterers ruining one's home life. Actually by marrying Ina, and becoming Sickles son-in-law, Darryl was making a bigger social and career gaffe than by possibly covering up Hubert's death.

I keep wondering if Darryl went to such lengths about Hubert's death to keep his superiors in the foreign office from looking more closely into his choice of bride's family connection.

[Jonathan H]

The Sometime Surgeon vs. the Drowned Doctor

To Caz

The suicide note may have been made up by William as Valentine was not there to refute it.

Or, as I think, 'going like mother' refes to being sectioned, which he would have been as his confession to somebody began to lead to that net closing (we ate not talking Catholics here).

Yes, I agree that multiple interpretations are possible about that enigmatic Vicar piece.

Simon Wood does not even think he is real, just a tabloid invention. It's possible.

'Whitechuch' may have meant that the Vicar was textually placing 'substabtial truth under fictitious form' eg. the title is fiction, whereas the content is factual but incomplete.

Or, the paper may have been annoyed that he would not break and so outed him somewhat as not being from the North at all.

The Vicar himself may not have been a Druitt at all, he just did not want himself embarrassed by being named, and so on.

What we do know is this:

His version of the Ripper matches Druitt better than the 'drowned doctor' and yet the latter is about Druitt.

Coincidence?

An openly fictionalised suspect -- both Gentile, Anglican 'doctors' with Kelly as the final victim -- is competing with a covertly fictionalsied suspect, and the latter is a story which make the police look better.

Coincidence?

From 1894 Mac began reshaping the data as in anticipation of a major leak about Druitt, though un-named, and now it had arrived.

Coincidence?

By 1902, Sims began adding details about the drowned doctor which brought it close into alignemtn with the Vicar somewhat (eg. long unemployed doctor, 'at one time a surgeon').

The Vicar's Ripper had 'epileptic mania' which involves shreiking, raving, possibly homicide and suicide. So does Sims' Ripper in 1907.

More coincidences?

By 1914, Mac began conceding that Druitt did have time to make a confession after Kelly and was, like the Vicar's Ripper, not the subject of a police inquiry whilst alive -- yet another coincidence?

Sims had written that Jack did not have even 'a single day' to make a confession, to function -- by 1914 Mac extends the gap to a day and a night, it might be longer, and he can function to get away from Miller's Ct.

[Jonathan H]

Who was the 'friend'?

Yes, Druitt was buried in 'hallowed ground' because the inquiry into his suciide judged that he killed himself whilst his mind was unbalanced.

This was a standard verdict to get a gentleman buried on the 'right' side of the graveyard, but the 1889 sources also show that his self-murder was inexplicable to his contemporaries.

He must have been mentally unbalanced.

What other explanation could there be?

His dismissal from the school which may have happened whilst he was alive, but more likely happened when he was missing -- missing and deceased as with the cricket club -- is not linked by any extant source to his suicide.

It's 'Sad Death of a Local Barrister' (with a bright future before him, professionally speaking) not 'Disgraced School Master Found Drowned'.

I will say again what has not been noted before until recently.

William Druitt, if he said that the deceased had no other living relatives apart from himself and his mother, had also thus cornered himself into saying it was a 'friend' who tipped him off that Montie was missing in London.

He could not say it was a family member, and if it was did not want to.

Why not?.

If Druitt left a message with the school, the cricket club and his legal chambers that he was abroad, how did this 'friend' know he was missing, not in exile in Paris, or wherever -- that his whereabouts were unknown?

Mac via Sims compresses the brother and the 'friend' into the anomic 'friends' who are searching for the missing doctor. The brother too became a pal, therefore originally this cover may have been William's invention: a brother, or in-law or cousin who alerted him, was turned into a 'friend'.

Interesting too that the 'friend' is carefully left un-named by William at least in the admittedly dodgy 1889 account.

I postulate that Montague suffered some kind of breakdown at the end of November ('Since Friday ...') and had confessed to cousin Charles who was under the seal of the confessional not to reveal what he knew. But he had ordered Montie, whether he was the Ripper or not, to turn himself in to the nearest asylum for medical care either because he was a murderer or because he thought he was, eg. to go like his mother.

Once Charles discovered that Montie had gone AWOL from his legal chambers instead of turning up himself at the school he went to Bournemouth to inform the older brother, but whther he kept from him what he knew until the body turned up in the Thames can never be known.

None of it can be known in detail, only the broadest of broad outlines.

It must have been the most stressful month for the Druitts in-the-know: is he dead or abroad, has he takaen his own life, is he really the fiend, what will be the fallout for the Druitt name ...?

The potential stress of the crisis, with the fear of the press getting wind of it, almost beggars belief.

All we have left is the glimpes from the primary sources of a tormented family member and a panicked family in touch with the police, or a policeman (though not in 1888 as ims has it). Sir Melville then recorded for file that the 'good' family 'believed' the worst, and that their late member was 'sexually insane': they believed that he gained erotic pleasure from ultra-violence. This belief-secret leaked out of Dorset in 1891, then was debunked in 1892, then relaunched with signifcant alterations as the best solution in 1898/9.