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Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

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  • I think that Montie (which is how a member of the family spells his nickname) may have requested that the whole story come out for the sake of the truth, to salve his cosncience or because he believed that he was seriously ill and thus not entirely responsible for his actions.

    This is the the theme of the Vicar's tale: the fiend was not a fiend at all, but a gentleman who was good but destroyed by a mental affliction over which he had no control.

    Either the Vicar was told by a family member -- or he is a family member -- that he would bring ruin to them all and so a compromise was made. A compromise not accepted by 'The Daily Mail' which refused to publish his story, only publish a story complaining about not being able to publish it.

    My own suspicion-theory is that this compromise, trying to 'keep everyone satisfied -- even the dead murderer -- was thought up by Macnaghten. After all, what the Vicar characterises as 'substantial truth under fictitious form' begins with Mac in the meagre extant record.

    Using the same logic as those who advocate the Maybrick Diary as likely to be authentic because it is so dodgy, you would not construct a tale as convolucted and unsatisfying as the Vicar's if the whole thing was made up and/or the clergyman did not even exist.

    In that sense Sims, three days later, tidies up the Vicar's dodgy tale as to what it should be in terms of meeting the narrative-dramatic needs:

    Sims as Dagonet in 'The Referee' body slamming the Vicar's Ripper by rewriting it (January 22, 1899).

    'There are bound to be various revelations concerning Jack the Ripper as the years go on. This time it is a vicar who heard his dying confession. I have no doubt a great many lunatics have said they were Jack the Ripper on their death-beds. It is a good exit, and when the dramatic instinct is strong in a man he always wants an exit line, especially when he isn't coming on in the little play of "Life" any more.

    I don't want to interfere with this mild little Jack the Ripper boom which the newspapers are playing up in the absence of strawberries and butterflies and good exciting murders, but I don't quite see how the real Jack could have confessed, seeing that he committed suicide after the horrible mutilation of the woman in the house in Dorset-street, Spitalfields. The full details of that crime have never been published - they never could be. Jack, when he committed that crime, was in the last stage of the peculiar mania from which he suffered. He had become grotesque in his ideas as well as bloodthirsty. Almost immediately after this murder he drowned himself in the Thames. his name is perfectly well known to the police. If he hadn't committed suicide he would have been arrested.'


    That's better!

    The Vicar himself hears the confession.

    Why is the fiend confessing at all? He's on his deathbed. He wants to receive some kind of churchy absolution as the grave and Judegment Day yawns before him.

    That's much, much better.

    And ... even better is the tale that Sims says is the real story.

    The Real Jack killed himself in a fit of maniacal self-loathing after what he did to Mary Kelly.

    Better and better!

    What I can never get anybody to debate me on, ever, is that here we have two semi-fictional versions of Jack competing with each other. One is overtly a mixture of fact and fiction, the Vicar's, and the other is covertly a mixture of fact and fiction, Mac's via his cronies (eg. a surgeon's son into a surgeon; the family into 'friends').

    That to me is too much of a coincidence to be about different Jacks.

    And the covert version makes the police look a whole lot better.

    Plus the covert Jack's persistent advocate, Sims, denounces the former's advocate, the Vicar, as false.

    Why?

    Because the real Jack, Sims claims, had no time to confess anything to anyone.

    After what he had done to that poor woman's remains, Jack was incapable of such nornal and coherent behaviour.

    According to Sims in 1907 the un-named 'Dr. Druitt', far from being able to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with a cleric, was 'raving' and 'shrieking' as he staggered to his watery grave (raving, shrieking, homicide, and suicide are all symptoms of what Victorians called 'epileptic mania', exactly the disease which the Vicar claims his Ripper suffered from).

    What we know now is that the Ripper of Major Griffiths and George Sims, really Mac's Jack, is Montague Druitt a young barrister who had three weeks to confess whatever he liked to whom ever he liked, as he functioned outwardly, at least, until the final implosion which was carried out coolly and methodically.

    Therefore, bizarrely, the Vicar's Ripper fits Druitt better, yet we know the 'drowned doctor' is definitely Druitt.

    The reason Sims gives for why they cannot be the same man is not because the Vicar heard his confession (who told Sims that?) but because the timeline is wrong. Not only wrong -- ludicrous.

    In 1907 Sims will write that the real Jack could not function for even 'a single day' after Miller's Ct.

    In 1914, Macnaghten will extend the timeline of murder and self-murder by a day and a night (perhaps it was longer, he implies) which means the un-named Druitt could function to get away from the East End, and then be found to be 'absented' by 'his own people' (he could still square it with Sims by claiming he meant to write the 9th and not the 10th).

    By 1914 Mac has arguably aligned his tale with the Vicar's more than Tatcho's.

    At the inquest we are not sure what happened in terms of the details; whether there was two notes or one, or whether behind that there were any notes at all because a key witness, George Valentine, was not there.

    What we do know is the cricket club sacked Montie because they thought he was overseas. In the one source which mentuons his dismissal from the school it is not linked to his suicide, and no other source bothers with this bit of data at all.

    The cricket club would not fire somebody who might have gone and killed themselves if the notes had been found earlier to that date.

    Once it was known that the man was in fact deceased, and tragically by his own hand, they added condolences to their next meeting's minutes.

    We can theorise that nine days after the club sacked Montie, if the date is correct in that 1889 source, William Druitt arrived at the school -- where his brother had also been sacked for being AWOL -- because Will was worried about his supposedly o.s. brother and wanted to search his belongings (which were still at the school, strange if he had been sacked to his face). William claimed, a few days later at an official inquest, that he found a note addressed to him which alluded to suicide and their mother's madness as a deux ex machina, and this neatly shut down any further enquiries.

    By 'no other relative' it can mean just the immediate members: father (deceased) mother (sectioned) William (present) and Montie (deceased). No other living relatives. Everybody had cousins, and this is how the Druitt names could be interpreted at the funeral. Big deal.

    William was an experienced solicitor and he knew that the danger to his family at the Lamb Tap could be fixed and fixed quickly, and that he could play fast and loose with the facts as he saw fit (he had actually seen his brother since the 9th of Oct as they were in the High Court together celebrating their franchise victory on the 22nd of Nov). He could be confident that no local press hacks were going to turn in to Woodward and Bernstein about such an unfortunate tragedy about a minor figure of the establishment -- and they didn't.

    Comment


    • Plus of course the mention of 'no other relative' is not in a source which is covering the funeral, so again I would argue that this was the least of William Druitt's worries.

      I would also add that not a single credible example of 'gone abroad' as a loose euphemism for missing due to disgrace, let alone missing presumed killed himself, has been found in any official records of the Victorian Era of which I am aware -- ignorant, colonial hillbilly that I am.


      Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette

      United Kingdom

      Saturday, 5 January 1889

      FOUND DROWNED. — Shortly after mid-day on Monday, a waterman named Winslade, of Chiswick, found the body of a man, well-dressed, floating in the Thames off Thorneycroft's. He at once informed a constable, and without delay the body was conveyed on the ambulance to the mortuary. — On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Diplock, coroner, held the inquest at the Lamb Tap, when the following evidence was adduced:- William H. Druitt said he lived at Bournemouth, and that he was a solicitor. The deceased was his brother, who was 31 last birthday. He was a barrister-at-law, and an assistant master in a school at Blackheath. He had stayed with witness at Bournemouth for a night towards the end of October. Witness heard from a friend on the 11th of December that deceased had not been heard of at his chambers for more than a week. Witness then went to London to make inquiries, and at Blackheath he found that deceased had got into serious trouble at the school, and had been dismissed. That was on the 30th of December. Witness had deceased's things searched where he resided, and found a paper addressed to him (produced). — The Coroner read the letter, which was to this effect:-"Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing was for me to die."

      — Witness, continuing, said deceased had never made any attempt on his life before. His mother became insane in July last. He had no other relative. — Henry Winslade was the next witness. He said he lived at No. 4, Shore-street, Paxton-road, and that he was a waterman. About one o'clock on Monday he was on the river in a boat, when he saw the body floating. The tide was at half flood, running up. He brought the body ashore, and gave information to the police.-P.C. George Moulson, 216T, said he had searched the body, which was fully dressed excepting the hat and collar. He found four large stones in each pocket in the top coat; £2 10s. in gold, 7s. in silver, 2d. in bronze, two cheques on the London and Provincial Bank (one for £50 and the other for £16), a first-class season pass from Blackheath to London (Southwestern Railway), a second half return Hammersmith to Charing Cross (dated 1st December), a silver watch, gold chain with a spade guinea attached, a pair of kid gloves, and a white handkerchief. There were no papers or letters of any kind. There were no marks of injury on the body, but it was rather decomposed. — A verdict of suicide whilst in an unsound state of mind was returned.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by RivkahChaya View Post
        I've always been sort of puzzled by him going into the water with the checks in his pockets, because he could have messed up someone's bookkeeping forever. But, in regards to his identity, he may not have thought his body would ever wash up.

        Drowning has got to be a pretty awful way to die, compared to some other ways you could take your own life; I can't help wonder if he chose it in order not to leave a body for people to deal with, as would be the case if he poisoned himself, or shot himself, or hanged himself.
        Hi Rivkah,

        With his impending suicide taking up every waking thought at that point, I doubt Monty would have worried about messing up anyone's bookkeeping. However, if his thoughts extended to drowning himself (I agree, pretty awful, especially that time of year) in order to spare the family having to deal with his body, it would have been simplicity itself to tear up the season ticket and cheques before taking his final dip, just in case he was washed up before all other identifying features were obliterated.

        Love,

        Caz
        X
        "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." Peter Ustinov


        Comment


        • Hoaxes within hoaxes

          Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
          This is the the theme of the Vicar's tale: the fiend was not a fiend at all, but a gentleman who was good but destroyed by a mental affliction over which he had no control.
          Hi Jonathan,

          As soon as I saw your words - and before I read on and saw your reference to the Maybrick diary - I felt like I was being smacked over the head with it: "tis love that does destroy..." and the plea to anyone who should discover Sir Jim's confession: "Remind all, whoever you may be, that I was once a gentle man. May the good lord have mercy on my soul, and forgive me for all I have done. I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentle man born".

          In short, the fiend was not a fiend at all, but a gentleman who was good but destroyed by a love over which he had no control.

          You see why I'm sceptical about the Vicar's Tale, as published in the Mail? And why I think the diary was a similar kind of tale, told a long time ago, when such tales were fashionable?

          Using the same logic as those who advocate the Maybrick Diary as likely to be authentic because it is so dodgy, you would not construct a tale as convolucted and unsatisfying as the Vicar's if the whole thing was made up and/or the clergyman did not even exist.
          Oh but that's exactly the sort of thing being made up at the time. Who didn't enjoy reading a good old yarn involving the ripper confessing all on his death bed? Plenty of real people made false confessions at the time of the murders, but when these began to dry up, the next best thing would be to invent someone's confession and claim it was really by the murderer this time - a hoax within a hoax. You have Sims saying it better here than I could, and in genuine Victorian-speak too:

          'There are bound to be various revelations concerning Jack the Ripper as the years go on. This time it is a vicar who heard his dying confession. I have no doubt a great many lunatics have said they were Jack the Ripper on their death-beds. It is a good exit, and when the dramatic instinct is strong in a man he always wants an exit line, especially when he isn't coming on in the little play of "Life" any more.

          I don't want to interfere with this mild little Jack the Ripper boom which the newspapers are playing up in the absence of strawberries and butterflies and good exciting murders...'
          He recognises the Vicar's Tale for what it is, and not just because he claims to know the real Jack didn't get a chance to confess. That was just him showing off his supposed inside knowledge. He knows the Vicar's Tale has hoax written right through it like a stick of Blackpool rock.

          At the inquest we are not sure what happened in terms of the details; whether there was two notes or one, or whether behind that there were any notes at all because a key witness, George Valentine, was not there.
          You are surely not suggesting that William invented Monty's note addressed to Valentine? I think you'd do better to stick to the forgery theory. Valentine was sure to be interested in the details of the inquest, and all hell would have broken loose if he had heard that such a note had not been given to him but opened and read by someone else.

          What we do know is the cricket club sacked Montie because they thought he was overseas.
          'We' know no such thing, Jonathan. You only think you know. Your failure to find what you describe as 'credible' examples where 'gone abroad' simply meant 'can't be found' doesn't mean the cricket club minutes didn't contain a perfectly credible example. What do think it means whenever people have referred to the ripper being 'abroad' in Whitechapel? It may sound old-fashioned these days, but it's perfectly good English and the meaning could not be clearer.

          We can theorise that nine days after the club sacked Montie, if the date is correct in that 1889 source, William Druitt arrived at the school -- where his brother had also been sacked for being AWOL -- because Will was worried about his supposedly o.s. brother and wanted to search his belongings (which were still at the school, strange if he had been sacked to his face).
          Not really that strange, assuming Monty was on the edge by that point and ready to tip over. Valentine may have given him the cheques and told him to collect all his belongings, but if he just wanted to end it all he'd have written the notes, left them with his stuff and headed off.

          By 'no other relative' it can mean just the immediate members: father (deceased) mother (sectioned) William (present) and Montie (deceased). No other living relatives. Everybody had cousins, and this is how the Druitt names could be interpreted at the funeral. Big deal.
          I can live with that. You are right, that would be no big deal. Maybe that's what William did mean, and maybe that's how it was interpreted, in which case he wasn't being deliberately economical with the truth in order to conceal a more destructive truth.

          Love,

          Caz
          X
          Last edited by caz; 03-08-2013, 05:01 PM.
          "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." Peter Ustinov


          Comment


          • Originally posted by caz View Post
            With his impending suicide taking up every waking thought at that point, I doubt Monty would have worried about messing up anyone's bookkeeping.
            Well, I was being flippant, but what I really meant, was that people who commit suicide to the extent of leaving a note generally put their affairs in a little bit of an order-- they cancel appointments, take pets to the shelter, seriously, and sometimes a person not having done such things has caused a medical examiner to rule a death not a suicide, or at least to rule it an "impulsive" suicide, which is a modern way of saying "temporary insanity," and such a ruling can sometimes allow survivors to collect on insurance.

            I guess I'm still not sure whether the checks were written to Druitt, or from him, but if they were to him, couldn't a family member bank them? I guess I would think he'd leave them with the note, but I suppose maybe he didn't check his pockets carefully. It's hard for me to imagine, but I suppose back them, people wore pants over again without laundering them, and stuff might end up at the bottom of a pocket.

            As far as arguments that a story must be true because if it were fiction, it would be a better story, with fewer loose ends, that just strikes me as stupid. It reminds me of psychics, who claim that we have to believe they have real powers because of the fact that they fail pretty often. If it were all an act, like stage magicians, they'd succeed every time, or so the claims of people like Uri Geller go.

            Comment


            • Hi Rivkah

              If you're facing, for example, terrible financial difficulties, and are considering doing away with yourself, you do NOT attempt to put your affairs in order...suicide is, in fact, (at least in part), being contemplated as a way of escaping that. You don't discuss it with your family/friends either...sometimes not even a spouse...

              You even try to avoid opening envelopes that might contain a bill or dunning letter...to the extent that post piles up until you can summon courage to open it...debt management charities/agencies recognise this and offer counselling to help...

              With the loss of his steady school earnings did Druitt face financial pressures? Has anyone ever had this checked out? What if the two cheques found about his person were returned ones? This might explain a good deal...

              Just a thought

              Dave
              Last edited by Cogidubnus; 03-08-2013, 10:30 PM.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Cogidubnus View Post
                If you're facing, for example, terrible financial difficulties, and are considering doing away with yourself, you do NOT attempt to put your affairs in order...suicide is, in fact
                All true, but then, I thought that went along with the leaving a note part; people who are in dire straits, and have dependents sometimes try to make the suicide look like an accident, or, if they read the policy carefully, an "impulse."
                What if the two cheques found about his person were returned ones?
                I hadn't thought about that. How did the business of refusing or returning checks go back then? Did the school issue him his last paycheck, then stop payment because he was fired? or were they checks he wrote that got returned? did banks return them by mail then? I suppose if he thought his body would never wash up, he might have wanted to take them with him, rather than burn them, or something-- it could have even been some sort of compulsion. In that case, the train ticket might somehow have represented guilt or failing that he deliberately took with him.

                Also, if he couldn't keep track of his personal affairs, and not for lack of trying, but maybe for memory lapses, that may be why he felt he was "going to be like mother."

                In my experience (and I have some), people who are having first psychotic episodes, of schizophrenia, or manic episodes of bipolar disorder with psychotic features (the best modern equivalent of "crazy"), don't have a good perspective on the fact that something is going wrong, but people who are having memory lapses, or just not taking care of business as they should, due to the onset of something like Alzheimer's, or Huntington's disease, are at first, very aware that something is wrong with them. As it progresses, they become less aware, but in the beginning, it can be very frightening.

                I don't know what Druitt had, or what his mother had, I'm just saying that if he couldn't keep track of his finances, because he sometimes couldn't remember where he'd spent money, or he lost checks, or forgot bills, and paid more in interest, he could certainly feel like he was "going crazy," like his crazy mother.

                Just a thought.

                Comment


                • No room at the Inn?

                  To Caz

                  As expected you did not deal with my essential point about a covertly fictionalized suspect (the drowned doctor) being compared to an overtly fictionalized suspect (the Vicar's Ripper).

                  And that the former helps the image of the police better than the latter, yet the latter fits the real Druitt better.

                  I understand why you don't.

                  Sims is not saying that the Vicar's tale is an hoax. That is not his meaning at all.

                  He is saying that the cleric is real but is inevitably ignorant of the ways of criminal lunatics; that on their death-bed they will lie to make 'a good exit', rather than make an honest confession.

                  Plus Sims is blithely rewriting the Vicar's tale. The latter is not claiming to have received the confession, in person, at all.

                  Sims' trump card is that the real Jack had no time to confess anything to anybody because he killed himself immediately. But that is not true of Druitt (and Macnaghten in his memoirs created a twenty-four hour gap which is enough time to confess to 'his own people') who had three weeks to confess anything to anybody he chose.

                  But I agree with your point about Victorian sentimentality.

                  The Vicar wants to see the Ripper as an ill man, rather like a family member would, one who does not want to see Jack as evil.

                  I think the cleric tried to defend the un-named Montie before the pesky reporter by saying that he had gone originally to the East End to help Unfortunates. Realizing that he should not have said that, he quickly added the Mac-Griffiths fictional shield that he had been 'at one time a surgeon' (again Mac does not see Druitt as so mentally ill that he was not responsible for his crimes. He was turned on by ultra-violence: the Nero of the East End).

                  How well did this muddying the waters work by the cleric who would not compromise?

                  RipperLand in the 21st Century rejects the 'North Country Vicar' source as being about Druitt, or of any significance whatsoever.

                  'Gone abroad' obviously means that the club thought Montie was overseas and so he had to be dismissed. They would not have done this if his any suicide notes had been discovered.

                  It's just common sense, whether they meant the phrase literally or euphemistically they would not have written it into the official minutes of their club's records if they knew by the 21st of Dec. that Montie was missing and had left a message that he was off to do harm to himself.

                  This suggests that the primary source is correct: a worried William did not arrive until the 30th of Dec. because Montie was not missing until that moment -- he had left word that he was suddenly abroad, specific location unknown.

                  This fits Sims' version: that the friends believed that he was the Ripper because he and vanished from the place at which he lived (not worked, as the mad doctor did not work at all).

                  So, William Druitt arrived on the 30th and found out that his brother had been sacked from the school for the same reason: AWOL. He searched his sibling's belongings and either found one or two, suicide notes which alluded to suicide due to the fate of their mother.

                  Whether that was literally true, about finding the note(s), the point is the inquest had to be satisfied as to Montie killing himself due to some kind of breakdown, not murdered or self-murdered due to guilt over something.

                  For example, William did not make any claim that it was because his brother was dismissed from the school, and no other source even bothers to mention this detail at all, probably because it was redundant.

                  The received wisdom on all this -- Druitt as a tragic gay suicide totally unconnected to the Whitechapel crimes -- was always weak as it flew in the face of the very same surviving primary sources which were being used to construct this myth.

                  The vicar only wants to see Jack as ill, not evil. Whereas some modern researchers, in their zeal, have gone much further by supposedly getting Druitt off the hook as a suspect altogether.

                  Yet this theory hung from a slender thread: the theory (treated as fact) that Mac did not know much about Montie.

                  This is now a now discredited theory since the identification of the MP in 2008 as the missing bridge had at last been found between the Druitt family in Dorset (that's likely Vicar Charles, by the way) and the affable police chief via the Old Boy Network.

                  My contribution, considered nothing much here, is the revisionist reassessment of sources by the police chief, or about him, or on his behalf.

                  For example, the frantic friends in Sims, searching for the missing mad doctor, is clearly brother William and the friend who alerted him fictionalized for public consumption. That is not a detail which could be in P.C. Moulson's report about the recovery of Druitt's water-logged corpse.

                  To know that detail, about the hunt by the brother, Macnaghten either read the same 1889 sources as we do, or he met with the family, or a family member.

                  Either way he originally knew, in about 1891, that Druitt was a young barrister who killed himself three weeks after the Kelly atrocity.

                  Confirmation is that Mac's memoirs disagree with M.P. Farquharson about the murder and self-murder taking place the same evening, and do not claim that the murderer was a middle-aged medico.

                  But for many people here, and in recent, authoritative secondary sources, this theory of a meticulously briefed, competent and discreet Macnaghten is flatly rejected because there does not seem to be room for two police chiefs to be just as certain about their preferred Ripper suspects.

                  Comment


                  • Monty had no immediate financial worries. He left a goodly sum. i suspect the thing that would have depressed him the most about being sacked, was his exclusion from the social scene including his beloved cricket.

                    Comment


                    • His estate was in the region of £2600.

                      Comment


                      • Yeah, I guess so, that must have been a real bummer, that and being a vicious serial killer who was about to be sectioned by his own family ...

                        Comment


                        • Hi Robert

                          You say that Montie had no immediate financial worries, his estate being in the region of £2,600 - but how much of that was immediately realisable?

                          There is a big difference between cash immediately realisable (eg in hand and current account), cash on deposit (perhaps available at 90 days notice), or other realisable assets...which might include stocks/shares/property etc.

                          If you're sufficiently disorganised or emotionally upset (like mother?) it's still quite possible to be long-term financially secure, but short-term vulnerable - especially if you've been used to paying off largeish outgoings from immediate earnings...if a couple of cheques have bounced would that be shameful enough?

                          I don't know...and I appreciate it's fanciful, but has anyone checked?

                          All the best

                          Dave

                          Comment


                          • This is a primary source about the death of Montague Druitt.

                            It is quite different, in its focus, from what some people here are speculating upon:

                            Southern Guardian
                            England
                            Saturday, 1 January 1889

                            SAD DEATH OF A LOCAL BARRISTER.

                            The Echo of Thursday night says : — "An inquiry was on Wednesday held by Dr. Diplock, at Chiswick, respecting the death of Montague John Druitt, 31 years of age, who was found drowned in the Thames. The deceased was identified by his brother, Mr. William Harvey Druitt, a solicitor residing at Bournemouth, who stated that the deceased was a barrister-at-law, but had lately been an assistant at a school at Blackheath. The deceased had left a letter, addressed to Mr. Valentine, of the school, in which he alluded to suicide. Evidence having been given as to discovering deceased in the Thames — upon his body were found a cheque for £60 and £16 in gold — the Jury returned a verdict of "Suicide whilst of unsound mind."

                            The deceased gentleman was well known and much respected in this neighbourhood. He was a barrister of bright talent, he had a promising future before him, and his untimely end is deeply deplored.

                            The funeral took place in Wimborne cemetery on Thursday afternoon, and the body was followed to the grave by the deceased's relatives and a few friends, including Mr. W.H. Druitt, Mr. Arthur Druitt, Rev. C. H. Druitt, Mr. J. Druitt, sen., Mr. J. Druitt, jun., Mr. J.T. Homer, and Mr. Wyke-Smith. The funeral service was read by the vicar of die Minster, Wimborne, the Rev. F.J. Huyshe, assisted by the Rev. Plater.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Robert View Post
                              Monty had no immediate financial worries. He left a goodly sum. i suspect the thing that would have depressed him the most about being sacked, was his exclusion from the social scene including his beloved cricket.
                              Granted, we'd pretty much taken the ball and run far afield, but what I was saying wasn't so much that he was flat broke, as that he was beginning to mismanage things, like writing checks that weren't covered-- even when he had money. It just wasn't in the right account (I don't really know how accounts worked then-- maybe you had just one account for both checking and savings, or maybe if you had checking and savings, a banker who knew you might freely transfer to cover a bad check as a favor, without asking your permission, considering he couldn't just call you to ask about it). I was building on the suggestion that the checks may have been returned. Honestly, I still don't know whether they were written to him or by him. If they were returned, they might show that he was breaking down mentally.

                              Although, I guess whether they were for something he meant to pay, and hadn't gotten around to, or checks he hadn't deposited because he was having lapses of some kind, then that still explains why he'd go in the water with them in his pocket.

                              Comment


                              • Hi Riv and Dave

                                There is no evidence of impaired functioning that I am aware of. Monty's cricket dues were paid up. He was registered at King's Bench Walk for 1889 which seems to suggest that he planned to keep up this business address, and he was performing in court till virtually the very end. Of course, something happened at the school but we don't know what. It could be something as simple as failure to juggle his court work and his school work, till Valentine got fed up and gave him the push. His cricket form seems to have suffered too, but we can't hang too much on that.

                                Jonathan if he is suppposed to have killed himself because of Kelly, then as somebody once joked, you'd have thought he'd have started to have doubts about his mental health a bit earlier than that. Walking off with a woman's womb is wacky,that's for sure.

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