Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

[RivkahChaya]

Hi Riv and Dave

There is no evidence of impaired functioning that I am aware of.

It could have been very subtle, and it might not have been anything serious-- he could have had dizziness, poor coordination, and fatigue from an inner ear infection, for example, and memory lapses making him disorganized because he was sick (inner ear infections are insidious, because they aren't painful the way middle ear infections are, and don't produce cold symptoms, other than a headache or nausea; if you get a fever, it is often a low one; I had one once, that presented first with dizziness and nausea, so I thought it was food poisoning; it was only when it didn't go away for a couple of days, and I had headaches and blurry vision that I saw a doctor), but if he was hyper-vigilant over any onset of symptoms, he could have made something simple and transient out to be the beginning of the end, in his mind. If it made him lose sleep, it could have snowballed-- he could oversleep, and not show up to teach, getting him sacked, and making him feel as though he was on a downward spiral, because that's how his mother went.

If he was in addition slightly prone to clinical depression, which people with a tendency to other neurological problems are, and not because they are depressed over their other problem, but more likely because they have a common cause, he would also be the type of person to assume the worst.

So, it wouldn't have to be anything anyone else was aware of.

I know from my experience that people with degenerative diseases manage to keep them a secret long after diagnosis. They themselves notice something is "off," and see a doctor, but may not tell anyone else, other than a spouse, for years.

[Jonathan H]

Has Druitt been re-fictionalized?

To Robert

Everything you are writing is a theory based on very limited primary sources.

And it is a painfully weak theory, though I grant you this is the long-standing, conventional, collective wisdom of the 'community' about Druitt, the allegedly cleared never-really-a-suspect.

In effect, Montie has been fictionalized all over again (as he once was disguised as a middle-aged physician) by some of today's cognoscenti; as a tragic innocent totally unconnected to the Whitechapel crimes -- not even delusionally connected.

To make this face-lift work it means a person has to ignore every other primary source, ones which are arguably more reliable about Montie than a press story -- where Druitt was a deceased stranger to the reporter (who never even mentions his name).

That Druitt was depressed because he was sacked from the school is a theory.

That Druitt was sacked whilst alive is also a theory based on a single source.

That the line 'since Friday ...' refers to going mad like mother -- rather than being sectioned like mother -- is a theory about that source, not a fact.

This is what Henry Farquharson was saying about [the un-named] Montie Druitt, from the same region and 'better' class, a few years after the latter killed himself:

The Bristol Times and Mirror

Feb 11th 1891

'I give a curious story for what it is worth. There is a West of England member who in private declares that he has solved the mystery of 'Jack the Ripper.' His theory - and he repeats it with so much emphasis that it might almost be called his doctrine - is that 'Jack the Ripper' committed suicide on the night of his last murder. I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it. He states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania. I do not know what the police think of the story, but I believe that before long a clean breast will be made, and that the accusation will be sifted thoroughly.'

Druitt suffered from homicidal mania, not from suicidal depression over being let go from the lesser of his two vocations.

When another unfortunate was killed in the East End, two days later, and a suspect had been arrested, Farquharson would not be moved. He was thus ahead of the police about the arrested sailor and Coles as not a Jack victim:

From 'The York Herald' and 'The Yorkshire Herald'

Feb 18th 1891:

'The member of Parliament who recently declared that 'Jack the Ripper' had killed himself on the evening of the last murder, adheres to his opinion. Even assuming that the man Saddler [sic] is able to prove his innocence of the murder of Frances Coles, he maintains that the latest crime cannot be the work of the author of the previous series of atrocities, and this view of the matter is steadily growing among those who do not see that there is any good reason to suppose that 'Jack the Ripper' is dead. So far as Saddler is concerned, there is a strong feeling that the evidence will have to be very much strengthened against him by next Tuesday, if he is to be committed for trial. His manner in the Thames Police-court was consistent with any theory.'

In 1907 this is how the public were [partially] let in on it, anonymously, by Macnaghten via George Sims, this time referring, obliquely, to Blackheath and the search by William:

'The third man was a doctor who lived in a suburb about six miles from Whitechapel, and who suffered from a horrible form of homicidal mania, a mania which leads the victim of it to look upon women of a certain class with frenzied hatred.

The doctor had been an inmate of a lunatic asylum for some time, and had been liberated and regained his complete freedom.

After the maniacal murder in Miller's-court the doctor disappeared from the place in which he had been living, and his disappearance caused inquiries to be made concerning him by his friends who had, there is reason to believe, their own suspicions about him, and these inquiries were made through the proper authorities.

A month after the last murder the body of the doctor was found in the Thames. There was everything about it to suggest that it had been in the river for nearly a month.'


Here is Sir Melville Macnaghten in 1913:

Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)

4 June 1913

'FATE OF JACK THE RIPPER

Retiring British Official Says Once Famous Criminal Committed Suicide
London Cable to the New York Tribune
The fact that "Jack the Ripper", the man who terrorized the East End of London by the murder of seven women during 1888, committed suicide, is now confirmed by Sir Melville Macnaughten, head of the criminal investigation department of Scotland Yard, who retired on Saturday after 24 years' service.

Sir Melville says:

"It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that "Jack the Ripper" committed suicide six months before I joined the force.

That remarkable man was one of the most fascinating of criminals. Of course, he was a maniac, but I have a very clear idea as to who he was and how he committed suicide, but that, with other secrets, will never be revealed by me."

Here is another version of what he said at his 1913 press conference announcing his retirement:

Pittsburgh Press

6 July 1913

'Following out his observation regarding the necessity of the ideal detective "keeping his mouth shut," Macnaughton (sic) carried into retirement with him knowledge of the identity of perhaps the greatest criminal of the age, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 by the fiendish mutilation and murder of seven women.

"He was a maniac, of course, but not the man whom the world generally suspected," said Sir Melville. "He committed suicide six months before I entered the department, and it is the one great regret of my career that I wasn't on the force when it all happened. My knowledge of his identity and the circumstances of his suicide came to me subsequently. As no good purpose could be served by publicity, I destroyed before I left Scotland Yard every scrap of paper bearing on the case. No one else will ever know who the criminal was - nor my reasons for keeping silent."

For this theory to work, of A depressed Montie killing himself over his dismisal, or something else, it means that we in 2013 know more about the real Druitt than a highly regarded police chief of the day, albeit one who made a posthumous investigation, and who was so incompetent he could not figure out that this man killed himself because he had been sacked from his teaching job?

Nor apparently could his family figure this out either?

For file Sir Melville wrote that Druitt:

'... He was sexually insane and I have little doubt that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.'

Why put themselves through the horror of such a 'belief' -- and the potential for family ruination -- if it was all so simple and non-criminal; that he killed himself due to a non-violent mental disease?

[Robert]

Hi Riv

Yes you are right. Monty could - we don't know one way or the other - but he could have been suffering from a mental illness or a physical illness. Your post reminded me of a friend of years ago, who suffered from Menieres. He was a level-headed, calm, stoical kind of chap, but he said that the Menieres had on occasion made him feel suicidal.

[Robert]

Hi Jonathan

Actually, I do not believe that Monty was innocent. Nor do I believe he was guilty. I have an open mind on him, but consider him a good suspect - i.e. someone worth spending time on - because of what Macnaghten said. I also have a soft spot for the Monty theory because Dan Farson's book was the first JTR book I read, 40 years ago.

However, while I do have time for Druitt, I think it's important to point out the weaknesses. You ask whether we are entitled to go up against Macnaghten, who made a posthumous investigation etc. Well, more than five years after Monty was pulled from the Thames, Macnaghten managed to get Monty's age and occupation wrong. (He also asserted that Supt Charles Cutbush was the uncle of Thomas Cutbush. That was wrong too).

Macnaghten's story about the family's suspicions is intriguing, but we can't hang a whole case on it. Macnaghten might have been wrong. The family might have been wrong.

A similar situation arises with Kosminski, where we cannot just accept Anderson and Swanson's assertions, however intriguing they might be.

[Robert]

A small point, but one I think is worth making : Macnaghten's suspect was clearly different from Anderson's. Macnaghten would have known that Anderson had accused a Polish Jew of being the murderer, and probably believed Anderson's suspect to be "Kosminski." Therefore Macnaghten would have known (if his posthumous investigation had been carried out with all due care and if his claim to knowledge was correct) that Kosminski was not the killer. Macnaghten then destroys his records in order to save the good name of the Druitt family. Didn't it occur to him that at some point the name "Kosminski" might surface publicly, and that he was destroying the evidence which would supposedly have cleared this man? What about the good name of the Kosminski family? Macnaghten's attitude worries me.

[Jonathan H]

To Robert

I agree that Druitt may have thought he was the Ripper and this delusion misled the family, and later the MP and the police chief (and perhaps a priest too).

But it was, nonetheless, a delusion. they may have also mistakenly believed that people do not kill themselves because they suffer from a delusion.

If so, they were very mistaken.

Your adherence to the notion that Macnaghten actually got such basic information deliberately wrong is I think untenable.

Farson started this notion in 1959, of Mac mis-remembering, because the TV journalist lacked the time and resources to research more thoroughly.

He would have discovered that this theory was very unlikely as Macnaghten was famous for his retentive memory, for his hands-on style of police administration, and for his obsession with the Ripper case.

Once you realize that Mac via Griffiths changed the Druitt 'family' into anomic, untraceable 'friends', in 1898, then all bets are off.

It is more likely that Macnaghten is persistently re-moulding the data to suit the specific audience of the moment.

With Sims, Mac told him that the doctor had been in a lunatic asylum, and that he, the police chief, had written a definitive 'Home Office Report' which actually was archived in that dept. of state.

None of that was true either.

Macnaghten can thus be shown to always be manipulating data.

I think he communicated to the Major and the playwright that Druitt was definitely a doctor or else they would not have accepted they were being handed an official scoop.

Under political and bureaucratic pressure, Mac made Cutbush and Cutbush related.

This was dangerous, for sure.

But the official version was mothballed and seen by nobody, and the unofficial, 'Aberconway' version was seen only by cronies and family -- which did not matter.

So, not so dangerous.

In the filed version of the 'Report' (in the Yard's files) Mac would not commit himself that Druitt was a middle-aged doctor -- and he wasn't -- but did commit himself that Druitt was sexually insane (eg. gained erotic fulfillment from ultra-violence) and whose family, understandably, 'believed' he was the fiend.

In his 1914 memoirs, Mac dropped that the un-named Druitt was a doctor, or that he killed himself the same evening as the final murder -- as the MP had aggressively asserted.

In a technical sense the retired police chief makes no errors at all about Druitt in that 1914 document, the only one for public consumption under his own knighted name -- and the de-facto third version of the 'memo'.

The momentous significance of the 'West of England' MP titbits, with Farquharson identified in 2008, is that they show that 'belief' in Druitt as the Ripper began not with Mac but with 'his own people', in Dorset -- not London or Bournemouth -- and that this terrible knowledge probably leaked along the local Tory-constituency grapevine, in 1891.

When the MP's 'doctrine' was semi-officially relaunched, anonymously by Macnaghten, in 1898, the 'son of a surgeon' had become a surgeon, the MP and Dorset were out, the Thames River location of suicide was in, and the wrong date of November 9th 1888 as the self-murder of the murderer was retained.

Because Mac knew it was wrong, and so it was safe to retian

I argue that this disguise protected the family and the Yard's already dented rep.

When people today say that Mac believed incorrect and basic data about Druitt they are, I think, being misled-fooled by a long, long redundant ruse by that police chief (Mac mostly dumped this ruse himself, in 1914).
.

[Jonathan H]

To Robert

Fair enough.

I don't think Mac destroyed anything. He just said that to keep the surviving Druitts happy, and to declare that he alone knew and held the truth about the real Jack, and it would go into the sunset with him.

Mac may have believed that 'Kosmisnki' would never be found, as in Aaron kosmisnki, because he had so radically backdated the timing of his incarceration by two years.

That even if he was found, a long time later, it would muddy the waters so badly that some people would not accept that this Aaron Kosminski could be Anderson's suspect?!?

Exactly what we see today ...

[Robert]

Hi Jonathan

The trouble is, for someone who was supposed to be shielding the Druitt family, Macnaghten sure was talkative. We even have the name "Bluitt" mentioned at one point by someone - I can't remember the reference, but it was found by Chris Phillips.

If we look at Macnaghten's report, marked "confidential," then we see some rather mixed messages from Macnaghten. He tears up the case against Cutbush - but then volunteers the uncle-nephew relationship. Why would there be any political and bureaucratic pressure on him to assert this uncle-nephew relationship? You'd have thought that it was the kind of thing that the "powers-that-be" would have preferred to be kept dark. Again, Macnaghten not only names Druitt, he gives his initials for good measure. He couldn't have identified him any more clearly. So why should he make Druitt a "said to be" doctor? Why not say he was a barrister and teacher? Why should Macnaghten play these games? I suggest that Macnaghten either did not properly research Druitt or else that his retentive memory failed him on this occasion.

It's a great pity because it could all have been so different. If Macnaghten really had researched Druitt, and gone through the inquest papers, interviewed Valentine, obtained Druitt's death certificate, etc, then he might have placed that information in his memorandum and the case against Druitt would have been a lot stronger, because there would have been evidence that Macnaghten had really got his teeth into it. As the report was confidential, there need have been no bar on what Macnaghten could have put in it, except for any private info given him by the Druitt family under promise of secrecy. As it is, we have to wonder about Mac and about how much he really did know.

[Robert]

Jonathan, you'll remember about "Bluitt" but here's the link for anyone else who's interested :

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3132

[Mayerling]

Slightly Off this topic

I hope you don't mind - I have been under the weather for the last month or so. I have been following the thread, but not totally joining it. But I wonder if any of you can answer the following for me.

I know that bodies decompose - but this strikes me as odd.

The article on the recovery of Montie's body in the Acton, Chiswick, & Turnham Green Gazette of Saturday 5 January 1889 stated his body was found in an extreme state of decomposition. Now Montie disappeared on or about December 1, 1888. The news account in the Gazette said it was found at 1:00 (A.M. or P.M. not explained) on Monday, December 31, 1888.

Was there any record that anyone has come across of the river Thames being unusually warm for the winter month of December 1888? Or warm for a certain number of days?

You see, forgetting all of the motivation for suicide questions for awhile, I can't understand why a body - supposedly put into the Thames at the start of one of the coldest months of the year - would be in an extreme degree of decomposition by the end of the same month. Even if one considers how the natural gasses in the body may expand and do damage, extreme decomposition does not make sense to me.

There is the possibility of the body being a food source (sorry to make the suggestion) to fish or waterlife, but was the Thames so pollution free in 1888 to have large schools of fish eating corpses at the time? I did not believe it was (not like bodies found in the seas or oceans for example).

Any suggestions.

And while you consider these, has anyone ever checked out the lives or subsequent careers of

Henry Winslade of No. 4 Shore-Street, Paxton
Police Constable George Moulston, 216 T (which I take for "Thames River Police").

Winslade's finding Montie's body is somewhat like the start of Dickens' OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, where a body (erroneously identified as "John Harmon", the novel's hero) is found and brought ashore.

Jeff

[RivkahChaya]

What does "extreme state of decomposition" mean? Does it mean "relative to the time we know from other evidence, he must have gone in the water," or does it mean "bodies this decomposed are not usually still intact"?

A lot of things affect decomposition rates, including acidity of the water. What do we know about the Thames at that time of year? It's also possible that at some point, the body was caught on something relatively close to the surface, where the most decomposition happens, but caught in such a way that the limbs did not separate, and then it was jostled free somehow, and found very shortly after, still intact.

It might be that he was wearing some type of clothing that was especially resistant to decomposition on water (which IIRC, is true of certain wools), and the skin decomposed under the clothing, so that the clothing ended up holding the limbs onto the torso.

The word "extreme" must be relative to something, but maybe it just means "compared to other bodies that we manage to identify," and that might be a factor of Druitt's status, as much as the body's decomposition. Unless we know what the word "extreme" is relative to, we don't really know whether what is meant was that the body had decomposed very quickly for the time it was in the water.

If you are implying that Druitt died somewhere else, decomposed for a while, in some place where he would have decomposed quickly, and then dumped in the water, implying that maybe it wasn't a simple suicide, I don't think there's any question over the fact that Druitt committed suicide.

[Paddy]

Extreme state of decomposition

Hi
I would have thought it was to place emphasis on the amount of time he had been in the water?
He was said to have been weighted down by stones? so would have spent more time under the water than say a floating corpse. I would think old father Thames was pretty consistent temperature wise.........

Pat Marshall

[RivkahChaya]

That was my assumption, at first. I thought it was more like "Wow, it's that decomposed, and yet, was intact enough for identification."

[bolo]

Hello all,

Druitt's body was found in the Thames with stones in his pockets when temperatures were low, so wouldn't a submerged corpse actually decompose slower than one that swims on the surface?

Regards,

Boris

[Paddy]

Decomposition

I believe they blow up a lot more when submerged. Maybe they were referring to this?

Pat