Frantic Friends?

[Robert]

Hi Lynn

If someone told me that I'll never know who JTR was, but as compensation I'm allowed to know all there is to know about someone else instead, then Druitt would be a contender for the runner-up spot.

[lynn cates]

#1

Hello Robert. Who is #1 then?

Cheers.
LC

[Robert]

Hi Lynn

Well, Cutbush would be high on the list, plus one or two others, but if I were allowed to solve any mystery short of the identity of JTR, I guess it would be MJK, her family, her life story, and as far up to the actual moment of death as I was allowed to go.

[Jonathan H]

To Trevor

Well, we agree to disagree.

The notion of a suicided doctor as chief suspect was propagated by Macnaghten via George Sims.

Of course, the 'drowned doctor' was, by implication, an Englishman who took his own life in the Thames. On the other hand, Like Tumblety he was a police suspect in 1888, very affluent, friends no family and was out of action after the Kelly murder.

The Littlechild Letter, with Tumblety as a potetnial suicide when he was nothing of the kind, arguably shows how much Sims' Ripper was a fusion of Druitt and Tumblety -- with a perplexed Jack Littlechild in 1913 recognising some of the American suspect's features.

Your notion -- and it's a widely believed mistake -- was that the police thought that Kelly was the last murder and that 'Jack' was gone, either made, fled or dead at the time.

Hence the myth that the timing of Druitt's suicide put him in the frame. A rigorous examination of the primary sources shows that this is, to use your word, 'rubbish'.

These were all later notions, post-dating 1891 and the Coles murder, which were backdated into the initial investigation. All of the police sources do this, except Macnaghten (in his own name, in public) and Reid.

Let me try a circuit-breaker here, Trevor.

It's 1891, and you're the second-in-command at CID, and you investigate the unlikely tale of a tragic chappie as the fiend, a gentleman who is long deceased and by his own hand. This is, by the way, in the immediate aftermath of the Tom Sadler disappointment.

Unexpectedly you are totally convinced by what you learn about this deceased man, who can never never be arrested, or tried, or convicted.

What do you do next ...?

[Jonathan H]

Sorry, ignore previous post -- wrong thread.

And Lynn and Robert

If you look at the Macnaghten, the 1899 Vicar and Sims' sources a persistent theme through all of them is the inner torment of the Ripper.

They see Druitt as severely mentally ill yet an high functioning maniac and thus very hard to detect or even suspect: 'Protean', yet doomed -- a human ticking bomb.

[Cogidubnus]

Smith denounces the notion directly. Macnaghten, when not talking through his cronies, dismisses the suspect by omission. Reid and Abberline assume -- wrongly --that it is all just a press beat-up. Abd Swanson never overlly backed his beloved old chief either.

Yet Macnaghten, in his shifty internal reports, did know about this suepct and seems to have hadn much more access to accurate information.

Well whichever way you look at it, Jonathan, Mac certainly seems to be oh so adept at playing both sides against the middle, against each other, or anyone else you care to mention...a manipulator par excellence!

And there's us thinking Anderson was devious!

Thanks again for explaining your thoughts...

Best wishes

Dave

[lynn cates]

interesting

Hello Jonathan. Thanks. If true, a most interesting "Ripper" indeed.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

Brave, brave Sir Robert

Hello Dave. Perhaps Sir Robert only THOUGHT he was devious? (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Beowulf]

I think this is all very interesting, but Druitt's suicide note bothers me.

After all, if he were committing the crimes, why would he write: ""Since FRIDAY I felt I was going to be like mother..."

He obviously was committing crimes for about 3 months. He must've known that, even if he was an all out loon he did hold a job after Kelly's murder for a bit longer, and his depression would be based on knowing he was going insane, which means he was reflecting on that behavior...?

Another point which seems small I know, but Druitt looked to be a neat kind of person, impecible. How could such a man roust about in bloody organs, not to mention fecal matter? It's hard to imagine. Are there any such killers who were neat but 'messy' in their killing time? Seems to go against the character of the person.

Not knocking theory. I think it's very interesting, fascinating in fact, andI've ordered Autumn of terror as my next book to read.

[Jonathan H]

That Druitt was actually 'Jack' can never be known.

All I can say is that using historical methodology, in my interpretation of the limited surviving sources, Druit's fellow respectable bourgeoisie who encountered the story -- his family, and posthumously the MP and the people he told, and the police chief -- were all convinced, when they had every reason not to be (eg. too neat?)

We don't have Druitt's suicide note, instead we have a summary given at the inquiry into his death, which you quote.

To me it makes perfect sense if you realise that on the previous 'Friday' he had confessed all to an Anglican priest (possibly his cousin, Charles) and thus knew the clock was ticking to him being inevitably sectioned.

He was 'afraid of going like mother ...' into the ghastly twilight world of the asylum system. With the family disgraced and shunned.

In the semi-fcitionalsied version of Druitt, in George Sims, the murderer had already been 'twice' committed into psychiatric care for wanting to kill harlots due to a 'peculiar mania' (eg. the clerical confession, backdated) and his 'friends' (eg. his family) were scrambling to have the 'doctor' committed again (eg. for the first time) after the Miller's Court horror.

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
Suicide note.
'Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother'
Does it state exactly what Friday?, are we just assuming it was the last one before drowning. or could it have been Friday 9TH November.
Druitt, although a reasonable suspect , has never been high on my list, but he does fit with Whites[ vague ] encounter, and possibly Bowyers sighting in the court, where eyes were a focus.
Regards Richard.

[Jonathan H]

Unlike his brother William and his cousin Lionel, we have no adult pictures of Montague Druitt, only high school ones from Winchester.

Nevertheless with his clear, open face and moustache. medium build, future athletic prowess as a cricketer, he is a generic match for Joseph Lawende's sailorish-attired, Gentile-featured young man chatting amiably with Eddowes.

I argue that in 'Aberconway', and with Sims in 1907, and in his memoirs, Macnaghten went to great lengths to eliminate Lawende and his sighting from existence.

Mac also seems to have confirmed to Sims that his party-piece about a coffee-stall owner on the morning after the 'double event' thinking that a blood-stained man -- who looked like a younger Sims on a leftist pamphlet -- was a genuine sighting of 'Jack', and therefore the famous writer was the fiend's double.

Druitt has hair parted in the dead centre in the school photos, and has a high-forehead, a sharp chin and hooded eyes -- just like Sims in that 1879 photo, albeit without a beard.

Even more specific, no other picture of Sims has the parting of his hair in the centre, but instead off-centre.

That's quite a 'co-incidence'.

[Bridewell]

Since Friday

Hi,
Suicide note.
'Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother'
Does it state exactly what Friday?, are we just assuming it was the last one before drowning. or could it have been Friday 9TH November.

Regards Richard.

Hi Richard,

For the note to be unambiguous, Druitt would have to be referring to the Friday preceding the date on which he wrote the note. For it to be a reference to Friday 9th November, on that basis, it would be necessary to argue that Druitt wrote a suicide note before 16th November & waited two or three weeks before jumping into the river. For Druitt to have said, "Since Friday" without being more specific, he must have felt that the person for whom the note was intended (Mr Valentine?) would have known, without explanation, which Friday was being referred to. I think I would have to argue that the recipient had already had a discussion with Druitt about the events of whichever Friday it was, so as to render any explanation superfluous.

Something which happened on Friday caused him to believe that he was going to be "like mother" (i.e insane?). I think some kind of sudden nervous breakdown on Friday in front of a classroom full of school children to be a much more likely scenario. The Friday event need not be something of great magnitude even; Druitt may have blown something up out of all proportion in his own mind. I believe Monty wasn't the only member of his family to commit suicide, so there may have been some kind of genetic disposition to such behaviour.

Druitt is one of the more credible suspects, and not easily dismissed. My own view, though, is that his suicide was an unfortunate coincidence and he became, in the mind of MM (& possibly others) a convenient peg on which to hang responsibility for a series of undetected crimes unless, & until, the real offender was unearthed. Until that happy day nobody could prove that MJD wasn't the killer, and he couldn't answer back. Nobody has ever come up with convincing evidence that Monty was a suspect before his suicide.

Just finally (I didn't intend this to be a long post!): If you were the killer, and wanted to save the family name, would you not leave a note which pointedly did so and come up with an innocent & chivalrous explanation? A failed love affair? Failure to make an impact in your legal career? Fear that you had contracted TB?

Regards, Bridewell.

[Wickerman]

Hi,
Suicide note.
'Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother'
Does it state exactly what Friday?, are we just assuming it was the last one before drowning. or could it have been Friday 9TH November.

We do not have the note, so neither the date it was written, assuming it would have been dated.
I guess it is always possible he considered suicide in the days following the Kelly murder (assuming him the killer), and wrote the note then but put it off for some reason.
Maybe his subsequent dismissal on Friday Nov. 30th was both a coincidence and the final catalyst?

Druitt, although a reasonable suspect , has never been high on my list, but he does fit with Whites[ vague ] encounter, and possibly Bowyers sighting in the court, where eyes were a focus.
Regards Richard.

He also cannot be ruled out as that Bethnal Green man, nor the man seen with Stride at the Bricklayers Arms. I had ruled Druitt out years ago, or perhaps I should say, never given him serious consideration for a good decade.
He is one 'suspect' that shouldn't be ruled out.

Regards, Jon S.

[Hunter]

I argue that in 'Aberconway', and with Sims in 1907, and in his memoirs, Macnaghten went to great lengths to eliminate Lawende and his sighting from existence.

Mac also seems to have confirmed to Sims that his party-piece about a coffee-stall owner on the morning after the 'double event' thinking that a blood-stained man -- who looked like a younger Sims on a leftist pamphlet -- was a genuine sighting of 'Jack', and therefore the famous writer was the fiend's double.

Hi Jonathan,

I'm sorry, but I don't get this. Macnaghten wants to eliminate Lawende and his sighting for what reason?

...And to vindicate Sims' coffee-stall story and the description of the man involved in that for what reason?