Frantic Friends?

[Bridewell]

Phew!

By politically-incorrect, I mean my opinion not yours.

Thanks for the clarification. I was trying to think when I called you politically incorrect. You had me worried for a moment, as I hate that phrase.

[Robert]

Hi Beowulf

There's no particular reason for thinking that Jack wrote a message in Goulston St, but if he did, then Monty could not possibly have been the Ripper - a classicist like Monty would not have perpetrated such a monstrosity, even when drunk.

[Bridewell]

Direction of Travel

Hi Beowulf

There's no particular reason for thinking that Jack wrote a message in Goulston St, but if he did, then Monty could not possibly have been the Ripper - a classicist like Monty would not have perpetrated such a monstrosity, even when drunk.

Just accepting, for the sake of argument, that MD was JtR, why would he go north-east from Mitre Square?

Regards, Bridewell.

Jonathan, I'll PM you on this as I may have found something of relevance. I'll let you be the judge.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Robert]

Good question, Bridewell. I don't rule people out on the basis of where they lived or which way they went, but it's always nicer for a theory when everything seems logical.

[Wickerman]

Just accepting, for the sake of argument, that MD was JtR, why would he go north-east from Mitre Square?

Good question, unless....
Thats the direction to Heneage Court, who's to say he was finished?

[Cogidubnus]

Afters

Now there's an interesting thought...the other Chapman...otherwise titled Rosies Lucky Escape...(always assuming the PC - Spicer was it? - wasn't embellishing)

Dave

[Jonathan H]

I don't the direction proves anything about anything.

The murderer could he headed for where he lives, to make as easy as poissble for the police, or he could be simply doubling back?

[jason_c]

I don't the direction proves anything about anything.

The murderer could he headed for where he lives, to make as easy as poissble for the police, or he could be simply doubling back?

I agree. While its possible he was heading home its just as possible he was taking the quickest escape route away from the murder site.

[Beowulf]

Hi Beowulf

There's no particular reason for thinking that Jack wrote a message in Goulston St, but if he did, then Monty could not possibly have been the Ripper - a classicist like Monty would not have perpetrated such a monstrosity, even when drunk.

That I could believe, and Monty would certainly know how to spell. Even the double negative would seem unlikely coming from an educated man like him.

[Jonathan H]

I agree.

I don't think Druitt wrote it, and never have, and nor was it written by the murderer.

I appreciate that this puts me at odds with my own source, of course.

If I could just steer the thread back to its original question.

In the very first post were a set of quotes from George Sims, and from one of the 1889 press accounts of the inquiry into Druitt's death.

I am arguing that, since they match on a detail not in PC Moulson's report, this is an incisive glimpse into Mac's private and posthumous investigation of Druitt; that he did, as he said, 'have a perfectly clear idea of who he was and how he committed suicide' (1913).

[Bridewell]

Why Keep Going?

I agree. While its possible he was heading home its just as possible he was taking the quickest escape route away from the murder site.

Okay, That would make sense in terms of leaving via St James Passage, but he continued for a quarter of a mile in the same direction. If he was going to double back, it would mean he travelled half a mile, just to end up close to his starting point. He's heading for Spitalfields - we just don't know where!

Sorry, Jonathan. Just wanted to address that one point. I'm probably going to have to re-read your article before I contribute much more.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Jonathan H]

Is the digit, rather than than the month wrong?

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. ... A verdict of suicide whilst in an unsound state of mind was returned.


Many secondary sources have fairly argued that the date of 'Dec 30th' makes no sense to sack Druitt, as it had just been learned that he had left a suicide note.

That the month must be wrong; that he was dismissed on November 30th a few days before he took his own life, and that perhaps the two events are linked (though no source makes such a link, not even the only one to mention it).

But this flawed, ambiguous source could also be interpreted as referring to the day that William arrived and learned that his brother was sacked and that he had left a suicide note.

But Dec 30th would still make no sense; that it would take him that long to move on from investigating Montie's legal city office to the Blackheath school, at which his brother resided.

Therefore I theorise that the month is correct but that the date is wrong, and by only one digit: 13 not 30.

That William Druitt learned from some 'friend' who went all the way out to Bournemouth to tell him that his brother was missing. He came to London the next day and began searching, and on the following day -- the 13th of December -- he arrived at the school.

William discovered that the 'serious trouble' was the same as why the cricket club had dismissed Montie: he was AWOL. Perhaps even the same story was doing the rounds, eg. fled abroad. Yet,paradoxically, his belongings remained at the school?

Druitt was sacked whilst missing, in fact because he as missing, and that is why it was not the usual face-saving resignation.

All other 1889 accounts of the inquest into Druitt's untimely death were more circumspect: eliminating this excruciating detail about the Valentine School sacking a corpse, and replacing it with the more positive claim about the headmaster also receiving a final note -- albeit one that only 'alluded' to suicide.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Jonathan

I think that is a reasonable conjecture that William Druitt actually said "13th December" not "30th December." We know that at the inquests it was common for the newspapers to mishear what a witness said and so make a mistake in reporting the testimony.

Best regards

Chris

[Robert]

Hi Jonathan

That seems possible, but I would guess that if he was sacked for going AWOL, he must either have had a row with Valentine just before, or maybe gone AWOL on at least one occasion previously. If a regular, respectable employee suddenly goes missing, surely one's first thought isn't to sack him, but to be anxious about his safety, maybe contact next of kin. Yet Valentine did not contact William - a friend did. That makes me suspect that Valentine wasn't worried about Druitt's safety, either because he'd done this kind of thing before, or because Druitt had stormed off in a non-suicidal frame of mind.

[Jonathan H]

To Chris George

Thanks.

To Robert

Yes, I think that is a fair point.

I would, nevetheless, counter with the following:

1. All the other sources, and subsequent ones give the dismissal no weight either because it was considered irrelevant, or because oit happned whilst he was deceased and therefore irrelevant -- and embarrassing.

2. He was not allowed a face-saving resignation. He may have refused. Or, he was not there to resign?

3. The cricket club doing exactly the same thing to a respebtable gent and competent bowler, and member of their admin.

From Matthew Fletcher's excellent dissertation on Druitt:

' ... However, on 21 December, after MJD had vanished, but before he had surfaced at Chiswick, the meeting's minutes record: 'The Honorary Secretary and Treasurer, Mr M J Druitt, having gone abroad, it was resolved that he be and he is hereby removed from the post of Honorary Secretary and Treasurer' ...'

What made them think Druitt had gone abroad?

If I am right about the date being Dec 13th, then William Druitt and George Valentine knew they were dealing with a young man in extremis, quite likely deceased.

Therefore, who told the cricketers that Druitt was irresponsibly AWOL, and unable to fulfill his duties when he was prbably dead somewhere and by his own hand?

Was it Montie himself? Did he leave such a misleading note, and then weight down his body so that it would never be found?

Or, was it a frantic William Druitt, hoping that his brother was only contemplating suicide but had not carried it out; that he was instead resting in some bolt-hole and would surface alive.

Therefore William stalled with the cricketers until he knew the worst (or did he already know somthing even more appalling? Did the unidentified friend who alerted the brotherm on the 11th, also inform him that Montie believed himself to be the Ripper?)

The overall point is that being AWOL got him sacked from both the club and the school, and until the note, or notes, were found among his belongings -- argubaly on the Dec 13th -- Valentine was under the same misapprehension, and perhaps for the same reason.

eg. That Druitt had inexplicably taken off abroad, while the headmaster needed to assign teaching duties for the coming semester and had to fire him to make up the schedule.

Once he realised Valentine made the shcoking discovery that he was dealing with a potential suicide -- and then a real one -- all other 1889 sources discreetly dismissed the dismissal of a dead man as a pointless and redundant detail.

Montague John Druitt being unemployed from the lesser of his two vocations for a few days (or no days if he was already dead) becomes melodramatically exaggerated -- and thus veiled by Mac -- in Sims.

From 1906:

'Some of us must have passed [Jack] in the street, sat with him perhaps at a cafe or a restaurant. He was a man of birth and education, and had sufficient means to keep himself without work. For a whole year at least he was a free man, exercising all the privileges of freedom. And yet he was a homicidal maniac of the most diabolical kind.'