Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

[Robert]

Thanks Jonathan. I see Mac is still playing his games, though.

Hi Riv

There could be something in that - after all, Macnaghten bothered to explain Kosminski's madness (masturbation), so if he thought that Druitt's madness was due to his homosexuality, he might have been expected to say so.

[Jonathan H]

To R-C

This is a very weak argument.

But it is an essential part of the redundant paradigm that Montie was gay, he had nothing to do with Whitechapel, Mac knew nothing accurate about him, and so on.

I really do understand why it has to be defended at all cost, even though none of the primary sources back it up.

Macnaghten is explciit in his memoirs about the meaning of sexual insanity -- see previous post. It's not aboiut being exclusively a homosexual, and in Druitt's case he killed women.

Of all the Victorian police Sir Melville was the one with the potentially most liberal and modern attitude because he had been to Eton, and his friends included Oscar Wilde (whom he still called a genius to young Christabel even after he had been ruined).

Of 'Kosminski' Mac wrote 'solitary vices', not unmentionable vices' which reduced him to the level of a brutal manaic, as did the pious and reactionery Anderson.

[RivkahChaya]

But it is an essential part of the redundant paradigm that Montie was gay, he had nothing to do with Whitechapel, Mac knew nothing accurate about him, and so on.

What's a "redundant paradigm"? do you mean it's predicated on itself, and is therefore circular? or do you mean "often repeated"? Or do you just mean that since, if it were the case that Mac had no accurate information, stating the rest of it is beside the point?

I wasn't arguing that Druitt was gay. Previously, I have argued that JTR, whoever he was, was not gay, because he killed women, but that is neither here nor there.

All I said was that I did not think we could assume "sexual insanity" = homosexuality, either as it applies to Druitt, or in some other case, as a Victorian used it.

I don't know whether Druitt was gay or not. I have not seen anything to suggest it, other than what I think is the incorrect assumption that Mac. thought he was based on what we understand "sexual insanity" to mean. I don't think we can 1) be sure what Mac. meant; nor 2) know that if Druitt were gay in the modern sense, Mac. would be aware of the fact.

The only thing that might be true is that Victorians probably thought any kind of sexual "deviancy," including homosexual acts, could cause a person to becomes insane, and therefore more likely to commit crimes, but while Victorians may have believed this, and therefore, if Mac. actually had correct information that Druitt had a male lover, Mac. might be more inclined to believe on the balance of evidence that Druitt could be guilty, there is no actual correlation. Being gay would not cause someone to become criminal, and therefore, even if Mac. possessed accurate evidence about Druitt's private life, that says nothing about Druitt's likelihood of being JTR. I suppose it could be his "private information," though.

[Jonathan H]

Macnaghten, perhaps wrongly, believed that Druitt gained sexual pleasure from strangling and mutilating East End Unfortunates.

If Druitt had actually been a gay man who killed himself because he was sacked from his secondary job, Sir Melville would have happily told the family so and got a fellow and tragic toff off the hook.

Mac judged, perhaps wrongly, that he could not -- he was Jack.

It has nothing to do with homosexuality, at least according to the limited, surviving sources.

That's a modern spin, mutating from the theory that Mac knew nothing about the real Druitt.

In Miller's Ct. the 'Protean' Druitt over-indulged his dark passions and it unhinged him, but not so -- as Mac's memoirs conceded -- that he could not exit the crime scene with his faculties intacticus. He did not have to stagger to the river immediately because there was nothing else he could do with his mind blasted.

He had a day and a night, maybe another day to ... do what? Confess?

Put crudely, a paradigm is a belief in which there are no loose ends. Everything fits.

It is believed by man here that the paradigm of druitt as a tragic homoisexual, and of Macnaghten as a forgetful, incurious and incompetent police administrator (at least about the Ripper) has no significant loose ends.

This suspect was debunked some time ago.

I am arguing that the discovery of new sources and the revival of belgected sources shows that there are significant loose ends. That collapses the all, encompassing theory or paradigm.

Worse, it means that in terms of historical metholdogy, the strongest argument -- I claim -- is not Anderon-Swanson-Kosminski, or its Cohen variations, or Andrews-Littlechild-Tumblety, but rather Druitt-Farquharson-Macnaghten.

That the mystery was solved in 1891. This was shared with the public, albeit in veiled form from 1898 to 1917, but the solution was forgotten once Macnaghten (and Sims) died in 1921 and 1922 respectively.

[RivkahChaya]

A paradigm isn't a belief. A paradigm is a conceptual model, although it can be a model that explains a system of beliefs (it can also describe the Japanese style of business management, or college education in the US). I asked what you meant when you said "redundant paradigm." I wasn't sure how a paradigm itself could be redundant, except that paradigms are sometimes highly theoretical, and therefore can be predicated on reasoning that is circular, and I thought maybe that's what you meant. But then I though maybe you meant "reiterate," rather than "redundant."

[Jonathan H]

A paradigm is a scientific theory which explains everything until it doesn't and then begins to collapse of it's own contradictions, either due to a new theory which explains things better and/or because it has a flaw which grows and engulfs the rest.

I am using the term both descriptively and satirically, because beliefs about an historical episode-event should not be so doctrinaire as they are in science, in the lab, nor so acrimonious as they are with some here.

Eg. Macnaghten was long ago exposed as, at best, inaccurate and unreliable. For example, Ostrog whom he also calls a dangerous maniac has been proven to be a thief -- and to have an iron-clad alibi.

Druitt is nothing. A gay innocent who was sacked on Nov 30th -- as a fact --and who took his own life due to a scandal or hereditary depression.

Yep, that's possible.

Could there be another possibility which is arguably backed by a broader range of primary sources.

No.

His suicide could not possibly have anything whatsoever to do with the Ripper murders.

Adherents to a paradigm cannot allow for such a possibility which is scientific (or religious) orthodoxy not history, for the latter must allow for multiple possibilities coexisting and never being absolutely resolved (of course plenty of History faculties are deformed by rigid Marxist and Post-Modernist paradigms too).

That's why using the word 'paradigm' is meant ironically and not literally.

RipperLand is to some extent a multi-paradigmatic universe; it has competing attempts at dominance.

For example there is still a dwindling faction who regard the hoax 'Diary' as probably real and thus James Maybrick as the best suspect because he admitted it. Such lonely adherents could counter-argue that it is they who are 'persecuted' by a dominant paradigm which says that the diary is a crude hoax and that Maybrick has nothing to do with the Whitechapel murders. Much like people who were ridiculed when they first questioned the Seven Day Creation or the Great Flood, and so on.

Another paradigm agreed upon by a large number of people, who do not agree about other aspects, is that the police were beaten and baffled by the fiend. That all their later claims to have really had a terrific suspect who was just out of reach -- no two suspects are alike except in their conspicuous lack of incriminating evidence -- is so much exaggerated theorizing and nothing more.

This is a reasonable theory. I just happen to not agree with it at all since MP Farquharson's identification in 2008.

What I find is that when you challenge some people with an argument based on neglected primary sources, to show that this theory -- however reasonable -- might be wrong, I find some cannot grasp what you are arguing and just trot out the same tired and stale cliches.

Or so I claim ...

[RivkahChaya]

There are scientific paradigms, religious paradigms, literary paradigms...but I still don't know what you mean by "redundant paradigm."

[Jonathan H]

Obselete

[RivkahChaya]

Obselete

Ohhhhhhh! I get it now. Like when someone on a British TV show says they were "made redundant," and it means they got fired. We don't use the word that way in the US, which is why I didn't understand, but now that the light bulb has gone off, I totally agree with you.

Not a criticism, just a right-pond/left-pond thing, that happens, but if you'd said "obsolete paradigm" right away, we could have skipped those last several posts.

[Jonathan H]

I disagree with the skipping.

Let me show you something.

If you go to Macnaghten in Police Officials and scroll down to his memoir chapter 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripepr' this is what you see as he intro:

Days of My Years

By Sir Melville Macnaghten, 1914

The memoirs of Sir Melville Macnaghten, Days of My Years, were published in 1913, only one year after the restired Assistant Commissioner of the CID publicly stated that he did not intend ever to write them. Chapter IV, entitled "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper," is dedicated to the Whitechapel murders.

Macnaghten did not join Scotland Yard until 1889 and was therefore not involved with the investigation of the five canonical Ripper murders, yet his views on the case are perhaps the most widely publicized of any police official. This is due to a memoranda he authored in 1894 listing three of Scotland Yard's top suspects; Druitt, Kosminski, and Ostrog. Rediscovered in 1959, the "Macnaghten Memoranda" has since become one of the cornerstones of Ripper study.

Shades of the memoranda's suspects can be found within the text of Days of My Years, and these tenuous descriptions were repeated numerous times in various other literature of the period.

The second para perpetuates an element of the obselete myth-paradigm. That Sir Melville was not there to investigate the cononical murders.

This is true.

But it directs away from the implication of the opening of his chpater: that the murderer was only known about, posthumously, years later -- when Mace was very much on the Force in a senior position.

It reinforces the theory, accpected as fact, that Macnaghten is a minor player in all this: a sideshow who could not get his facts right.

In fact, why is Kelly the final murder?

Because for Macnaghten it was after her destruction that the fiend destroyed himself. Again this is vital to understand that the egg came before the chicken.

The final para of the summary claims that 'shades' of the trio of suspects from the memo are in the chapter.

As if to say, nothing to see here, nothing new -- ove along, keep moving.

In fact the Polish Jew, the Russian doctor (and the American medico -- Sims 1907) are dropped entirely.

Apparently they are 'tenuous' descriptions repeated in other literature of the period. Actually Macnaghten does not repeat, and arguably refutes the notion that the Ripper was a doctor and ex-asylum inmate, who killed himself the same night that Kelly was killed.

[Stewart P Evans]

New Book

A new book claims that the preferred suspect of Macnaghten and Sims was Kosminski and not Druitt!

[Jonathan H]

Do you know the name of the book?

The suspect whom Macnaghten and therefore Sims are arguably also referring to is Tumblety.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

Melville Macnaghten may have known more than he cared to admit.

He was living in London throughout the Whitechapel murders and, with his appointment as Assistant Chief Constable having recently been blocked by Sir Charles Warren, I'm willing to bet that during this time he had many a tête–à–tête with his friend and sponsor, James Monro.

Regards,

Simon

[Stewart P Evans]

New Book

The new book is Conan Doyle and the Crimes Club - The Creator of Sherlock Holmes and his Criminological Friends by Stephen Wade, Fonthill Media Limited, 2013. www.fonthillmedia.com

[robhouse]

Hi Stewart,

Do you happen to know the reasoning or the evidence behind this claim?

Rob H