Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

[Roy Corduroy]

I postulate that Montague suffered some kind of breakdown at the end of November ('Since Friday ...') and had confessed to cousin Charles

I wasn't aware Charles Druitt was in London in November 1888.

But I could have missed it. There is info about the various Druitts such as this shared by Stephen Ryder and others.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

Now you know, Roy.

[caz]

Between Mac and the Mail

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

Perfectly in keeping with the niceties of the age, Jonathan. He was the latter, since he was dismissed by Valentine for some 'serious trouble' before he was found drowned. And today we'd get the latter, if the basic information seeped out from a school source that a master who had committed suicide had been sacked. Today, a man's class would not protect him and his family from public speculation about cause and effect.

If Druitt had been dismissed in his absence (and died without knowing about it) I should have thought Valentine would have made that very plain, rather than let it be thought that he had effectively sent a staff member to his untimely end by giving him the old heave-ho - serious trouble or not.

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.

A big if there. I suspect this was muddled reporting and he merely confirmed he was the only relative of Monty's there to represent the Druitt family. What reason could he have had to deny other living relatives when it would have been easy enough to find out that it simply wasn't true?

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?

An even bigger if here. There is no evidence that he left any message saying he was literally 'abroad', or that anyone thought that was the case. Time after time on these boards since we first had this discussion I have seen modern references to the ripper being "abroad in Whitechapel", ie in the same context as it was used in 1888 to mean someone was "out and about"; "on the loose"; "not to be found".

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.

So cousin Charles gaily goes to the Daily Mail with his sensational story that the ripper confessed to him, and reveals to the newspaper that his own name is Charles Druitt and his parish is Whitchurch? But oh no, the truth about his cousin's identity must never come out? I'm sorry, but I simply don't believe it. That story was either made up by another enterprising journalist from bits and pieces of ripper myth and misinformation, or the cleric wasn't a Druitt and wasn't much of a cleric either.

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

And yet we are meant to believe that instead of this terrified family doing all they could to keep the lid on what they knew (or thought they knew, or feared) about Monty, one Druitt at the very least blabbed about it to a loose-lipped MP (who liked to believe the worst about people and apparently couldn't wait to tell his police chum Sir Melville all about it) or direct to the Daily Mail, claiming that he had heard the fiend's confession.

Can you see why many of us are quite sceptical about what these sources could really have known?

Love,

Caz
X

[RivkahChaya]

Maybe he said "aboard," as in overboard, and was misunderstood....

Seriously; how big a violation would it be for a priest, Anglican or Catholic, to tell the police they can call off the dogs, the Ripper is no longer a threat, but that's all I can say?

Obviously, no cleric, or none who hoped to remain in that capacity, would go to a newspaper, but might one go to the police?

There was a Law & Order episode, very dramatic, about a priest wrestling with his conscience over the wrong person serving a life sentence, that supposedly was "based on a true story." I looked it up, and the grain of truth apparently was a priest asking the DA not to go forward with a prosecution, and the DA saying "I can't take your word on it." I couldn't find out how it was resolved, or if it was even the case that the person was innocent, and the priest knew who the real guilty person was. It may have been a matter of the priest thinking he could get e person to confess, or something.

That was in the US, in the 70s or 80s, and it was a Roman Catholic priest, so I don't know whether that has any bearing on how people would have acted in 1888.

[Jonathan H]

Sure, that's all possible but not very likely.

Plus you have not addressed the textual comparisons-coincidences at all.

No Druitt talked to the MP because, for one thing, they would not have got the timeline wrong, and might have felt some residual loyalty not to tell other people about their secret-tragedy.

But even the most closely held secrets leak. As this did in Dorset in 1891, where Vicar Charles lived, not William.

The other primary sources do not mention the dismissal, and Valentine is portrayed as receiving the suicide note or his own version. So it was cleaned up.

No connection is made between the dismissal which supposedly happened on Dec 30th, one day before the body turned up. More likely the date has been misheard and it was the 13th, eg. the day that William arrived at the school.

Going abroad in the context of the cricket club minutes means being literally abroad -- it's not a euphemism for anything in that context and attempts to show otherwise have been terminally weak.

Who on earth is going to check a local paper about such a tragedy if William said he was the only living relative along with mother?

The Vicar said do not reveal my name as it reveals the name of the deceased. The press had to be careful because of the potential to be sued for libeling the living. The 'West of England' MP makes this fearful excuse, as does Anderson in his memoirs -- and his chief was [supposedly] deceased too.

The overarching point is that an overtly fictionalised suspect is being compared with a covertly fictionalised suspect. Yet one is definitely Druitt and the other is a better fit for Druitt.

If it's Montie then the implication of the priest and/or Vicar's bizarre and risky actions is that it was the wish of the deceased and these clerics, or one, felt morally obligated.

Or the Vicar really is from the North and his name does not lead you to the Druitts at all -- that's fiction too.

The Vicar's shield was 'substantial truth in fictitious form'; exactly the same as what Macnaghten begins doing with the data from 1894: mixing fact with fiction.

Or is that just a coincidence ...?

[Robert]

"Who on earth is going to check a local paper about such a tragedy if William said he was the only living relative along with mother?"

Hi Jonathan

Well, Monty's legal friends or associates may have been interested. Besides, the inquest was reported in the "Southern Guardian" but with William's "only relative" remark omitted.

I suppose there must be exceptions to the traditional image of solicitors as ultra-cautious dried-up biscuits. But if William was prepared to gamble his legal career by committing perjury, then I would not have liked to be one of his clients. I would be enquiring about any funds of mine that he might hold, and trying to ascertain whether he was in the habit of visiting casinos.

[RivkahChaya]

The Vicar said do not reveal my name as it reveals the name of the deceased. The press had to be careful because of the potential to be sued for libeling the living. The 'West of England' MP makes this fearful excuse, as does Anderson in his memoirs -- and his chief was [supposedly] deceased too.

Would that constitute libel? In the US, truth is a defense against libel, so, repeating what someone told you could not be construed as libeling them, if they presented it to you as factual, whether they asked you to keep it a secret or not. If you were bound by some contract to keep it secret, you could be sued for breach of contract, I suppose, but no matter how nasty something is, if it's the truth, it isn't libel, in the US. Maybe that isn't the case in the UK, though.

Also, again, I don't know what the UK laws are, but I don't think you can libel a living person by telling lies about his dead relative. The lie has to reflect directly on the person. Back when "illegitimacy" was an actual legal status, and it meant something: it was stamped on every piece of paper related to a person born out of wedlock, and people who were illegitimate were barred from certain occupations by statute, then claiming that a person's deceased mother had had adulterous affairs, in a way that called his paternity into question, I suppose might libel the person directly (although, I think he'd probably still be protected by the marital assumption from being retroactively declared illegitimate); at any rate, that's just me trying to come up with a hypothetical. It might feel embarrassing for people to know that your brother died a suicide, and in some cultures, might cause people to reconsider marrying you, for one thing, but I don't think it is a libel against you to publish the fact that your brother died this way, and most especially if it is true.

[Jonathan H]

You can't libel the dead, but a law-suit could have been triggered by a newspaper claiming or implying that the family of the deceased knew he was the murderer and did nothing about it.

Depending on your interpretation of the surviving sources this could apply to both the Druitt and Kosminski clans.

Obviously since Tumblety was not deceased he could have tried and sue any British newspaper that made him about to be the Ripper. Tom Sadler apparently did so and successfully.

In Sims' account from 1899, the 'freinds' of the 'doctor' come across quite tardy in their attempts to alert the police.

After all, their pal was diagnoaed and periodically sectioned, and not just as mentally ill but specifically as a madman with a maniacal lust to tear up harlots.

You would think that from the first victim the friends, knowing that the doctor was out and about from the asylum, would have high-tailed it to the cops.

Instead they waited until Kelly, and by then the police already knew -- how? -- and the suspect had destroyed himself.

[Roy Corduroy]

Good evening Jonathan, that's very interesting, and I still say that your version, you 'take' on things actually makes it clearer - IF, there was any truth to the suspicions. If it's not true, it doesn't mean you didn't try your best, simply you have followed where the trail leads you. We'll never know.

I thought the smart money was on John Henry Lonsdale as the source of the story of suspicion. the family belief. And possibly the vicar story, too. Still, Lonsdale was connected to Charles Druitt as well. There is a nexus there.

The fact that Montague's cousin Charles is also a clergyman, and in the same general geographic circles as Lonsdale, and for that matter, Farquharson (as best I know) could lend something to the vicar story in a way we don't quite see. To the teller of the story, this could have been how 'Whitchurch' got dropped in there.

But as far as I know, neither Lonsdale nor cousin Charles were in London in November 1888, so I'm having a hard time picturing this confession by Montague Druitt to either of them - at that time and that place. Which is not to say it couldn't have happened some other way.

Roy

[RivkahChaya]

You can't libel the dead, but a law-suit could have been triggered by a newspaper claiming or implying that the family of the deceased knew he was the murderer and did nothing about it.

Ah. That makes sense. If truth is a defense against libel, then I guess there are three choices of defense:

1) The relative didn't do it.

2) He did (or, may have), but the family did not know (or, had no reasonable suspicions) at the time.

3) The family had no obligations to do anything.

I don't know enough about your laws to know about the last one. In the US, you can be arrested for failing to turn over evidence of a crime, but not generally for simply failing to pass on information. The DA will need direct evidence that you knew something, and when you knew it.

In the US, you are generally not allowed to suggest in print that a person who is alive committed a crime he hasn't been convicted of, which is why newspapers are careful to use "alleged" in reference to people who have been arrested but not tried. I suppose if a newspaper claimed that "family members" knew, without naming names, it probably wouldn't be libel, but most papers are savvy enough to stick in the word "alleged," or "rumored to," or something.

[Jonathan H]

To Roy

Thanks and you're probably right.

On the other hand, there is nothing to stop a middle-class person from travelling to London for any number of reasons.

I'll look up cousin Montie while I'm here. Hey, you don't look so good. Something is troubling you, I can tell ...

But I agree. The 'friend' seems to be somebody based in London who can check on Montie and discover that he's 'absented'.

It might have been Lonsdale it's just that he seems to have been on his honeymoon at the time (he's not at the funeral). Same issue with the cosuin -- he's based in Dorset by then.

As I speculate in my never-to-be-published manuscripot, perhaps a better fit is Druitt's brother-in-law who was an Anglican cleric, based in London who had a brother who is a Vicar in the northern direction, in Wostershire, in 1899.

[Jonathan H]

Vicar Charles Druitt had been a cleric in Yorshire at one point.

That's North.

Another aspect to consider is that nothing in the Vicar's tale is fictional about Montie, as in does not match, except the very last thing he communicated verbally: '... at one time a surgeon'.

So how then is the written account, 'The Whitechurch Murders -- Solution of a London Mystery', a mixture of fact and fiction?

One possibility is that this is nothing to do with Druitt, it's all just a coincidence or a press beat-up extrapolated from what Griffiths wrote.

Another is that the fictional element is the 'North Country Vicar' designation.

It's remarkably vague.

A reporter went to see the Vicar and he refused to give up more information, but then broke a little and defended the original goodness of the murderer by saying that he had gone to the East End for charitable purposes -- to assist fallen women.

Perhaps fearing he had revealed too much, the vicar added that he was 'at one time a surgeon'. He consciously added fiction to steer clear of the real Druitt, providing him with the same fictional shield as Griffiths.

'... at one time a surgeon' is like the first cousin of ' ... said to be a doctor'.

The other thing that makes it sound off-key is that in the written account the murderer had a 'good position' (like a barrister?) whereas a surgeon is a great position.

Why would a surgeon move from such a vocation to a lesser one?

If Charles Druitt is the Vicar then he had a buffer: the claim that a brother clergyman received the confession and he is just passing it on. Yet please don't reveal my name because it will reveal 'Jack's?

How so?

I think Tatcho asked Mac about this story, and the latter smoothly replied that it was in fact the Vicar who heard the confession of a lunatic on his deathbed and who has naively believed what he was told.

Sims quashes the story, three days later, as the Vicar receiving the confession, the exact opposite of what the cleric had claimed.

[RivkahChaya]

What, in the UK, is the difference between a surgeon and a doctor?

Here "general surgery" is a medical specialty, but all surgeons are medical doctors. There all also surgeries that are only performed by medical doctors in certain kinds of specialties, and those doctors don't perform general surgery, like cesarean sections. Those are performed by Obstetricians, who perform a few other surgeries, but in general are not surgeons. Orthopods remove bone spurs, and set bones that need to be set surgically, and will be on amputation teams, but do not do appendectomies (the sort of thing a general surgeon does).

There are certain very specialized surgeries that require surgical specialties, like neurosurgery, which is done by someone who is first a neurologist, and then a neurosurgeon.

When I see the words "doctors" and "surgeons" in UK publications, they seem to be used differently, like barristers and solicitors, to somewhat similar professions, whose paths nonetheless never cross.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi RivkahChaya

In British parlance, a surgeon is a specialist or consultant trained in surgery, while a general practitioner (G.P.) is qualified in medicine and may or may not have had any actual surgical training except for simple matters such as lancing boils, etc. A patient needing more specialist care than the generalist can provide is referred by the G.P. to the surgeon who can inform the patient of the different types of surgical options. Of course, these days such surgery can include laser surgery and other modern marvels whereas back in 1888 it would have involved the surgical knife, forceps, and other surgical implements such as the saw and amputation knife. Does that help?

Best regards

Chris

[Wickerman]

What, in the UK, is the difference between a surgeon and a doctor?

Just by way of adding to Chris's post...
(and no doubt adding to the confusion)

There was a bit of one-upmanship between the schools which taught surgery in the 19th century.
The correct title for a Physican is "Doctor", a surgeon is less qualified than a Physician and his correct title is "Mr".

We casually refer to all the medical men in the Whitechapel murders as "Doctor", but there is a distinction which we do not normally observe.

Regards, Jon S.