Upon what basis did the Druitt family suspect Montague?

[Cogidubnus]

Thanks Jeff/Caz

Your posts have helped crystalise some of the doubts I've been having over both the "gone abroad" phrase, and the alleged "like mother" suicide note...to me it really does begin to sound more like a family facesaver...

I feel that had Valentine's school had such an incident the parents of the boy involved would not have been so willing to be reticent.

I think most middle class parents would have been concerned about (a) the family shame and (b) the damage to their son's prospects (possibly in that order) and would have been quite happily complicit in a quiet resolution...The Marquess of Queensbury, being of the nobility, securely landed and rich, (whose offspring would never have to actually do anything for a living), could afford to ignore both these factors...the lower orders couldn't...

All the best

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Caz, Dave and Jeff

I am having trouble following most of all of that?

I know that you are all, to varying degrees, clinging to the old and terribly stale line about Druitt; one cooked up in the modern era and cut off from the sources about this figure.

It is an entirely modernist construct, in the worst sense.

One of you makes the good pioint that the Druitt family surely should have stopped believing once other victims were killed and suspects arrested: McKenzie, Coles, Sadler.

I agree. Which testifies to the tensile strength of their belief.

They remianed certain and so did the MP in the face of another 'Jack' murder in early 1891, and the police came around, a few years later, to agreeing with the politician that the Ripper was long deceased (Anderson and Swanson have a different deceased suspect from Mac, though he wasn't actually dead, and neither was Littlechild's. Hey, I wonder who misled them?)

The entrenched view, by some, is that Druitt was mistakenly or weakly shanghaied into the Ripper case due to an incompetent and/or misinformed and/or prudishly biased police chief.

Everything in the surviving sources debunks this long-standing, Orthodox opinion, which many treat as an established fact. It is a theory and a painfully unconvincing one at that because it involves torturing the primary sources to make it work.

Macnaghten, an enthusiastic product of Eton, knew all about homosexuality and masturbation and was probably the least prudish figure at Scotand Yard (eg. 'solitary vices' as opposed to 'unmentionable') about such matters.

Macnaghten was also an highly regarded, unusually hands-on administrator who insinuated himself into crime scenes and investigations, and who was obsessed with the Ripper case.

There is no strong reason to doubt that he investigated Druitt, albeit privately and discreetly, whilst having four countervailing pressures against taking Druitt seriously as the fiend: class, religious, institutional and temperamental -- yet he could not get Montie, and the family, off the hook.

Almost none of this is understood here or on the other site. But if you explain this to anybody, with even just a passing interest in history, they are stopped in their tracks for the same reason: a gent accused a deceased gent when he had local, low-life suspects he could have favoured instead to end the anguish of a 'good' family.

The meager surviving primary sources from 1889 do not indicate that Druitt was gay, or that he was dismissed for scandalous reasons, or that his dismissal -- if it even happened to his face, as the cricket club dismissal strongly suggests not -- was even linked to his suicide.

Rather the 1889 sources are appalled by his self-murder which is seen as wasteful and inexplicable.

Other primary sources (the MP articles from 1891; Macnaghten from 1894, via cronies 1898 to 1917, his public comments from 1913 and his memoirs from 1914) reveal the reason behind Druitt's suicide -- he was Jack the Ripper.

Or at least thought he was.

Macnaghten committed to file that M. J. Druitt might, or might not have been a medical man, but that he was, without doubt, 'sexually insane': he gained erotic fulfillment from ultra-violence (against harlots).

That Druitt, furthermore, suffered some kind of torment, some kind of psychological implosion in the wake of the Kelly murder (the 1899 Vicar and Sims in 1902, 1904 1907, 1910, 1915 and 1917 claim Jack's culpability came from his own lips) and this was totally unknown to the constabulary. The real Jack discreetly self-destructed while the Ripper enquiry ground on, year after fruitless year.

But somehow it was known to his family, or certain members of his family.

There is a straight line from William Druitt coming to London to search for his missing brother, to the fantic 'friends' in Sims terrified at the 'doctor's' disappearance 'from their midst', to Mac writing in his memoir that he was 'absented' from 'his own people' (who presumably provided the 'certain facts' which led to his 'conclusion').

Those 1889 sources are all over the place in a few of the details. We have Valentine also -- or only -- getting a suicide note, that William Druitt said that his late brother had only 'lately' been a schoolmaster in Blackheath, that a 'friend' tipped him off that Montie was missing from his legal chambers (well, he had to say an unidentified friend because he had apparently also claimed that he and the sectioned mother were the only living relatives of the deceased), and we have the cricket club who would hardly have sacked a man they thought might have taken his own life.

From that source we can say that by December 21st the Valentines did not know that Montie Druitt was a potential tragedy, and that he was probably sacked from the school for the same reason: unaccountably AWOL (apparently abroad). There are no examples of this expression being used in any official documents from that era, not would it be used if they thought he was perhaps lying on a slab somewhere.

It is more likely that clumsy 1889 source is nevertheless correct: William Druitt arrived at the school as late as the 30th and only then were his missing brother's belongings searched. George Valnetine had not done this because there was no need. So far as he knew Montie had fled abroad for reasons unknown but he had to prepare the next semester. He had not sent on his belongings -- which would be an expense -- as he had left no forwarding address. Then the note (or notes) were found and the body surfaced the next day. Other primary sources did not bother with this detail that the school had dismissed a corpse because it was redundant, irrelevant and embarrassing (instead, perhaps as face-saving cover, Valentine also receives a suicide note.)

The lingering, unsolvable mystery is whether there was a suicide note at all, or whether its content revealed that he was the Ripper -- because George Valentine did not testify.

We only have the word of William, and he, according to other primnary sources, already suspected, or knew, that his brother was a killer and may have been engaged in damage control.

It sounds very uncovincing: I felt I was going like mother and rather than seek treatment (how about from my own family of physicians?) I am going to commit a great sin against God. The idea of a ghastly asylum is so repugnant I would rather destroy myself.

William is supposed to have said that he had not seen the deceased since October when they were likely in court together in late Novermber, having won a not unimportant civil case favouring the Tory party.

The other sad aspect is that the Old Orthodoxy reflexively elbows to one side any attempt to nudge so-called Ripperology back to the 'original' suspect.

A hoax 'diary' of an innocent man, for example, commands more time and energy than the police suspect most likely (arguably one of three) because it can be anyone here, anyone, anbody at all -- except the suspect who [somewhat inadvertently] inspired the top hat toff so despised by too many of the cognoscenti.

[Cogidubnus]

It sounds very uncovincing: I felt I was going like mother and rather than seek treatment (how about from my own family of physicians?) I am going to commit a great sin against God. The idea of a ghastly asylum is so repugnant I would rather destroy myself.

Hi Jonathan

Please pardon me cherrypicking this one paragraph from your splendidly argued post. I'm doing so because it's one of the points that have been niggling away at me about the Druitt case...

I agree with you whole-heartedly that it sounds very unconvincing - and yes it sounds very much like a Brother William cover-up...but of what? You will agree, I hope, that in isolation it COULD be turned to support the "old paradigm" ?

All the best

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To C

Anything in isolation, cut off from other sources, can be argued anyway you like.

This is essentially how non-suspects Pedachenko, Dr Stanley, Maybrick, Gull, Clarence, Sickert, et al have been proposed.

That inquest, just an afternoon, had a mystery: why did this promising young professional take his own life? That he was dismissed from the school for 'serious trouble' did not answer this question, as all the primary sources show -- even the only one who mentions it.

William Druitt as the deceased's brother was the star witness, yet they did not even live in the same community. He claimed he had only seen him recently for one night in Bournemouth -- a lie. The Blackheath headmaster who might have shed light on Montie's recent attitude and general mental state was not there. People from his legal chambers were not there.

This leaves a question mark over what William testified and produced because other primary sources claim that he knew, or believed that his deceased sibling, was, of all things, Jack the Ripper.

All too conveniently William settled the mystery with a letter from the deceased which said something to the effect that 'Since Friday ...' he was afraid of going insane like mother and into the ghastly asylum system and so took his own life -- a remarkably pessimistic and panicked reaction to ... what exactly?

That bit about 'Friday' sounds dodgy too. Is it because when the body was found William initially and mistakenly thought that Montie had taken his own life on the Monday or Tuesday (his headstone says Dec 4th) before he learned that the train pass was for Dec 1st? Why would you write 'Since Friday ...' if that is the day you headed off to do it -- surely you might write 'Since this morning ...'? Unless you meant the previous Friday. A day the brothers were basking in the success of a Liberal High Court judge agreeing with their appeal on behalf of a renter cheated of his franchise rights.

Unless he did something on a Friday, which guaranteed that the clock was ticking for him to join his mother in a madhouse -- to 'go like mother'? That he had told somebody he was the Ripper. Why would they not go to the police straight away? Because they were family and thus had so much to lose? Why would not have him sectioned immediately? Unless they felt constrained by something -- like the sanctity of the confessional?

Maybe the note for William (and one for Valentine?) was exactly as summarized and was real. Montie was not going to leave behind documentation which would disgrace his family and so, before taking off for the Thames, made up a lame excuse fro anybody who would find it, and William naturally went with it. Or an excuse which actually alluded to his confession on a Friday.

Its that nagging word 'alluded' [to suicide]. As if whomever wrote it did not want to be too committed, or too definitive. A pulling back from the abyss -- but by whom: Montie or William?

The overall is that early 1891 MP bridging source shows that the notion of this 'son of a surgeon' as the fiend is from 'his own people', in Dorset, and not from a mistake-mishmash by Macnaghten in 1894.

When the police chief investigated the posthumous accusation -- I think right away -- all the bits about his dismissals, his cricket schedules and what he may, or may not have written in a note, were so much small beer. What he learned convinced him that Druitt was Jack.

Soon after the MP stopped talking to the press, Sadler was let go, and George Sims named, for the first time, the picture of himself from 1879 as the one that allegedly looked so much like the Ripper, according to a coffee-stall owner (or was it Mac?), the picture which so strongly resembles Druitt and is atypical of Sims.

[Mayerling]

Hi Jonathan,

I am somewhat at a loss about my point of view here.

First, I do think that what you have presented is certainly consistant and pointing in a direction that may be fruitful when more material is gotten. You certainly have brought out matters I did not know, such as the business of the clergyman who seemed to know about Druitt, but would not discuss it due to the sacredness of the confessional, yet was willing to write a fictional treatment of the case. All of this research really does impress me.

Second, I suddenly felt like I'm an old fuddy-duddy because I still have lingerting doubts. That happens. Unlike you I have not had any recent research project regarding anything concerning the Whitechapel Murders, and as such I am reduced to reading these threads and seeing if there are certain points I might clear up. In short, I am currently a sounding board. I apologize to you if I seem to be an old sounding board.

I'm not (please keep this in mind) rejecting everything - i'm questioning certain points just bother me. That happens.

Suicide is always a horror to the family and friends of the suicide. I've no doubt that the Druitts were absolutely dashed by Montie's demise. But it is a rather big step between horror at the self-destruction of a close relative, and suspecting that person may have been the most notorious murderer of the previous half century or so.

For the Druitts to have had a really firm suspicion, for that blabbermouth member of Parliament to make his comments (and why did he make them anyway?) there had to be something further. Maybe in continuing your researches you will come across it. Actually I really hope you do Jonathan, as it would be a good climax for this current research of yours.

But until you do we just have rumors, and while you certainly make them consistant and interesting they need more to them.

Again please note this is not any attempt at an arrogant type of dismissal. I really have been fascinated by what you have found so far.

Yours sincerely,

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

To Jeff

No, I don't mean you're old and therefore redundant.

I do not mean a person's personal age. Hey, I'm not young either.

I am talking about a stale and unlikely perspective on this subject -- I know it is widespread and hegemonic, eg. the overwhelming majority -- which I think is off-track.

One one level, it's actually simple what I am proposing.

If a competent police chief claimed in public that he had, in effect, solved the Ripper case -- though conceding the real Jack could never be brought to trial -- then the onus is on secondary sources as to why that claim should be rejected since he was there and we were not; albeit his investigation of that suspect was entirely posthumous.

(By the way, he claimed to have also identified the hoax letter writer in June 1990, and that is not well known here either.)

The one document for the public under Mac's own prestigious name makes no errors about his suspect, and we have, since 2008, a primary bridging source between the Druitt family and the police chief. We can now, therefore, see that the belief -- much stronger than a mere rumour -- came from his own family. Actually that's really just Vicar Charles, Montie's cousin, at that moment in Dorset in early 1891.

There is a cliche bandied around here, for years, about how families often suspected members of their family as being the fiend.

Really? Like who?

And who among those are members of the middle and upper classes who would blithely entertain such an appalling and unwanted and ruinous notion?

We see that families are in fact persistently the last people to believe such terrible things of one of their own, even when the evidence is indisputable. Apparently the surviving Boston bomber has confessed and yet his mother still claims it's all a stitch-up.

God, the bias here is so thick against Mac and Montie.

eg. Either the Druitt family never believed at all or they were hysterics prone to the most grotesque fantasies about one of their own -- who was a poor, tragic figure.

Neither of those two positions is likely, and arguably both are unsupported by primary sources.

Macnaghten committed to the official file that Druitt might not have been a doctor -- and he wasn't -- and that his family 'believed' for the eminently sensible reason that M. J. was into ultra-violence for sexual thrills (to his friends Mac assured them that the only 'fairly good' family just suspected, whereas he, the Super-sleuth, was as certain as you could be, at least about a corpse).

As you say, why would the family -- or at least some of them -- believe such a thing, unless the evidence was not only irrefutable but also of the greatest danger to their always precarious perch in respectable, Victorian society. If it became known that they were related to the author of the Whitechapel horrors they can kiss promotions and society goodbye. They would be shunned on the streets like Typhus carriers.

I like the way the libelous element -- that the family harboured the murderer, and certainly made no moves to inform the police until years later -- is thoroughly neutralized by Mac, via Sims, into the friends who were responsibly in touch with the police even before the 'mad doctor' is fished from the Thames (and of course that the efficient police were about to arrest him).

I think that Macnaghten, very awkwardly, tried to have his cake and eat it too about Druitt's [putative] confession in words to a clergyman, who may have been a member of that family.

Mac has the killer self-murder a good twenty-four hours after Kelly (eg. Druitt could function and get away) but that it is close enough, in time, to suggest a confession-in-deed; still shell-shocked he took his own life (how and where is not mentioned because the instant hike to the watery-grave will not work now).

No, not very convincing, but I do not think Macnaghten wanted to touch on a verbal confession directly.

That the final para of 'Laying the Ghost ...' is furtively dominated by fiction is there for all to see. He opens by dismissing the historical accuracy of a popular novel, 'The Lodger' (which has its 'Avenger' as a young man who kills himself), he falsely implies the real killer lived with his family, and he closes with the Ripper directly causing [the un-named] Warren's resignation -- which is not true and Mac knew it.

[Smoking Joe]

What chance that the Druitt family of today could yet enlighten us all,if they wished to?It appears, at least on the surface,that the family are the only people who have no (or very little) knowledge of the suspicions surrounding their famous/infamous family member.I say that based on comments Ive read attributed to 20th/21st century family members who have expressed surprise at such "revelations".
Ive heard through the jungle tom toms that some members have had conversations in the past with present members of Druitt family.Is that true? and if so...well of course no point asking really.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

We only have Macnaghten's word for it that the Druitt family suspected MJD of being the Ripper.

And given Macnaghten's inclusion of Michael Ostrog as "more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders", his word isn't worth an awful lot.

Regards,

Simon

[Smoking Joe]

Hello Simon,
I guess what Im trying to say is we have Macnaughtons suspicions or convictions regarding Druitt.He surely ,at the very least, made some attempt to investigate. We have Sims parroting those conclusions,we seem to have spectral vicars speaking of confessions ,west of England Mps making statements which appear to put the hat on Druitt, without its true actually naming him,but the inferences ,while not crystal clear are clear enough.We have the guy who brings up the name DR Bluitt,which can only really be a play on Druitts name.We have reports sent to the Home office about Druitts suicide ,if Abberline is to be believed. We have "some kind of something" going on at the Inquest.....at best Adruitt family member misleading -at worst lying.Friends of Druitt seemingly in a frenzy and contacting his family in Dorset .Why? because a fully grown adult male (MJD) had gone missing,or hadnt been seen for a few days. Something for certain was going on.
None of this proves Druitt was guilty,but what it shows is that more than a few knew ,or thought they knew,or were somehow involved in these events.Thats leaving aside any gossip they might have indulged in. And yet the Druitt family was blissfully unaware ,or nothing was passed on through the next century from father to son ,or from brother to brother or uncle to nephew etc etc etc. Its hard to believe.

[Mayerling]

Hi Smoking Joe,

It is not so hard to believe that the "BIG STORY/RUMOR" did not get passed on. Usually certain truths about crimes of the past are treated with care - but they have to be of a particular nature. In 1752 Campbell, the "Red Fox" was shot and killed in an ambush at Appin in Scotland, and, "James of the Glen" ended up being railroaded to the gallows by a trial with a jury of Campbell family members, and a judge of the same family. But when Andrew Lang wrote of it, he said there were many in the Appin region who knew who was the actual killer, and refuse to tell his name to that time (about 1900). It probably is still true, as family feuds mingled with twisted politics can last far longer than one would believe. Similarly, when the the 3rd Earl of Leitrim and his estate manager were murdered in 1878 in Ireland, although three men were arrested (one died in prison), nobody was convicted. But go to that area today, and there is a monument naming Leitrim's killers (who are regarded as heroes against the worst form of Landlord tyranny practiced at that time). But in those cases the dead were considered local villains, and their killers heroes. How to make someone consider the likes of a candidate for Jack the Ripper a hero?

People don't mind being related or descended from some villains. One of my high school friends is a cousin to the offspring of Benjamin ("Bugsy") Siegel. An old woman I used to know in the 1970s went to dances when a young teenager with the four hoods who shot and killed Herman Rosenthal in 1912 (and Rosie, the old lady, said "they were nice kids"!). People connected to Jesse James are somewhat proud of that rather dangerous bank and train rider. But I have yet met a person boasting about being a relative of Albert Fish or John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahlmer. I probably never will either.

Jeff

[caz]

Hi Jeff,

Currently, we have a certain 'Lechmere' arguing that Charles Lechmere was the ripper, and his partner is perfectly happy with him doing so, despite being a direct descendant.

And I believe the late Brian Maybrick wasn't partcularly worried or horrified about the finger pointing at his relative James Maybrick.

And of course we had the whole Uncle Jack thing going on too.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

As you say, why would the family -- or at least some of them -- believe such a thing, unless the evidence was not only irrefutable but also of the greatest danger to their always precarious perch in respectable, Victorian society. If it became known that they were related to the author of the Whitechapel horrors they can kiss promotions and society goodbye. They would be shunned on the streets like Typhus carriers.

Hi Jonathan,

Again you make my argument for me - and presumably for Simon too.

Firstly, we only have Macnaghten's stated belief that the family did suspect Monty of being the ripper, and secondly you outline above precisely why it's so unlikely that any family member would have leaked such suspicions, never mind the evidence for them (bloodstains; his supposed sexual preoccupation with ultra-violence) if they really had entertained them.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Thanks Jeff/Caz

Your posts have helped crystalise some of the doubts I've been having over both the "gone abroad" phrase, and the alleged "like mother" suicide note...to me it really does begin to sound more like a family facesaver...

Quote:
I feel that had Valentine's school had such an incident the parents of the boy involved would not have been so willing to be reticent.

I think most middle class parents would have been concerned about (a) the family shame and (b) the damage to their son's prospects (possibly in that order) and would have been quite happily complicit in a quiet resolution...The Marquess of Queensbury, being of the nobility, securely landed and rich, (whose offspring would never have to actually do anything for a living), could afford to ignore both these factors...the lower orders couldn't...

All the best

Dave

Hi Dave,

I agree entirely, but I suspect it would also have been rare for a boy to say anything about it to his parents, because of the shame of it all coming out and how his classmates might react; fear of not being believed; or giving his parents the trouble of sorting things out with the headmaster or changing schools. That's how so much abuse has gone unnoticed and unpunished over the years. Valentine could have got wind of what was happening, had a quiet word with Monty and let him go, and if a parent had later said anything, at least the matter would have been dealt with.

Of course, a Druitt family 'facesaver' could have been concerned with suspicions that Monty was the ripper, as opposed to knowledge that he was a boy lover (or woman hater), but since either would be cause enough to maintain a closed-lipped silence on Monty's sudden fall from grace, I can see how outside suspicions could have been aroused without a word from within the family. That's how rumours can grow and fester, when the truth is bad enough never to reveal, allowing a far worse untruth to gain ground.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jonathan H]

To Caz

You're wrong as usual, but worse you cannot absorb contrary opinions to the rigid orthodoxy you adhere so slavishly to, and for so long.

You have put all this flannel before.

I explain it to you but you never, ever absorb it and I understand why you cannot, you just repeat the same errors -- as if it has not been answered.

But for anybody new:

1. We do not only have Macnaghten's belief in the notion that the family 'believed' in Montie's culpability for the Whitechapel murders.

That is the breakthrough of Spallek's 2008 identification of the 1891 'West of England' MP.

The notion of Montie as the Ripper came from Dorset in 1891 and was picked up on the local Tory grapevine.

2. It is a straw man -- one of many -- that it is ludicrous that the family would have leaked this ruinous notion.

I agree. Who doesn't agree??

It leaked by accident as secrets do; somebody told somebody they promised not to tell, and it leaked.

For example, a traumatized Silvia Odio, in 1963, and her younger sister Annie swore to each other never to tell a soul that Oswald had been at their door a few months prior to the assassination of JFK in Dallas. The secret held for less than a year before a neighbor heard the tale from a family member and snitched to the FBI.

That the MP has the timing of Druitt's death and wrong, and what is more obviously feels zero loyalty to the family to keep his mouth shut, indicates that the secret has not come directly from the family but a disloyal go-between.

3. You impose this modernist idea of Druitt as a homosexual or a child molester for which the primary sources provide no evidence, and no suggestion whatsoever.

Quite the contrary some claim he enjoyed strangling and mutilating women.

4. It's Montie, not Monty.

[caz]

We only have Macnaghten's word for it that the Druitt family suspected MJD of being the Ripper.

And given Macnaghten's inclusion of Michael Ostrog as "more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders", his word isn't worth an awful lot.

Hi Jonathan,

You may have missed this, from Simon.

Why is it that when it's Simon doing the talking you agree to differ, but when it's me I am plain wrong and apparently cannot 'absorb' contrary opinions?

I have absorbed everything you post; I just don't find the evidence for your arguments as strong as you clearly do, and I would therefore need more before I could conclude that Monty makes as good a suspect in 2013 as Mac thought he was back in the day. And I am hardly alone with my reasonable doubts.

Love,

Caz
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