Frantic Friends?

[Bridewell]

I think Druitt took the cheques because he wanted to give the impression that he was abroad with means, though they would never be cashed.

I'm going to be thick here, because I don't quite follow. The cheques were with his body, so they won't give any impression at all, will they? The cheques will only be found when his body is, by which point any subterfuge they were intended to support will be obsolete? If the cheques were with his body when he was found, perhaps his original intention was to pay them in and the decision to commit suicide was sudden. Alternatively, their presence was intended to make identification of the body easy, but why would he want to do that if he was trying to give the impression of having gone overseas?

Regards, Bridewell.

[jason_c]

With regards to "having gone abroad", I have little doubt this was meant as having gone AWOL and not in the sense of going to foreign lands. Thus the lack of communication lead to his removal from the post of Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. Moving to foreign lands would be interpreted as a brief holiday and would not have lead to Druitt's permanent removal from these posts. However, he was removed from them.

Official minutes mentioning "gone abroad" would be sufficiently vague for polite middle-class cricketing society. Certainly it would be politer than saying "Druitt's went mad again" or "Druitt's abrogated his responsibilities". These were his friends after all. It was not in the committee's interests to humiliate the man.

[Jonathan H]

To Bridewell

No I meant that if Druitt's body was never found, he was trying to leave a trail of possibilities as to what he might have done, and where he might be headed, including -- for William -- taking his own life. That's if Druitt had been issued the cheques, and if the brother could investigate his sibling's financial affairs.

Perhaps not.

We just don't have enough.

In the veiled version of all this, in Sims, the 'mad doctor' is fabulously wealthy -- so much so that he does not need to work at all and hasn't for years.

The inspiration for this exaggerated notion, I argue, is the substantial cheques which were found on Druitt's corpse, but turning him into a man who was a member of the idle rich is deliberately misleading, of course, as the real figure worked two jobs and was a county cricketer too.

Druitt's fictional counterpart rarely goes out, except to ride around aimlessly on public transport before his 'mania' horrifically and tragically erupts again.

Consider this, which reflects the theme of the unidentified friend and the frantic brother becoming the generic and anomic frantic friends.

Macnaghten adored his school days at Eton and adored cricket.

Druitt was a cricketer of some note, and he worked -- part-time-- as an assistant master at a small, private, boys' school.

Is it really just a coincidence, allegedly based on Mac's ignorance, that these elements of Druitt's biog. are not only never mentioned by Macnaghten in any extent record, but that the profile he supplied Sims precludes the murderer being a teacher and a sportsman?

[Cogidubnus]

With regards to "having gone abroad", I have little doubt this was meant as having gone AWOL and not in the sense of going to foreign lands. Thus the lack of communication lead to his removal from the post of Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. Moving to foreign lands would be interpreted as a brief holiday and would not have lead to Druitt's permanent removal from these posts. However, he was removed from them.

Official minutes mentioning "gone abroad" would be sufficiently vague for polite middle-class cricketing society. Certainly it would be politer than saying "Druitt's went mad again" or "Druitt's abrogated his responsibilities". These were his friends after all. It was not in the committee's interests to humiliate the man.
Quick reply to this message

I can certainly wear that Jason...thanks!

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Jason

When you write that you have 'little doubt' does that mean you have no doubt, or maybe that you are almost certain, just like Melville Macnaghten -- who uses the same phrase in his Report(s)?

The reality is that the cricket club had humiliated a fellow gent. Hit him right where he lived in his stuffy, bourgeoisie world -- a world critical to a Victorian man's rep and success especially as a barrister.

And he was not suspended, he was fired.

They were not unsure as to his whereabouts, a completely different matter, as he had gone abroad and could not perform his duties.

The club management thought they knew where Druitt was and this mis-information may have come from Druitt himself, verbally or written, and it was -- understandably -- unacceptable that he continue in his offices if he was absconding abroad for some indefinite period.

Yet he not resigning[/I], the proper course of action -- just as he did not resign from the school -- so they were left with no choice, like Valentine.

In all Druitt primary sources, bar two, these events were considered so trivial that they were not mentioned.

The important element here is that the long-standing conventional wisdom on all this -- very shaky anyhow because it rested on the slender reed that we know more about Druitt than Macnaghten -- regarding the date of Dec 30th really being Nov 30th, eg. sacked whilst alive, is shown to be just as likely as Dec 13th; referring to when the brother arrived at the school.

And that Druitt may have been sacked because he was AWOL, an embarrassing detail for the school which morphed into the more positive claim that the headmaster also received a note 'alluding' to suicide (eg. I did not drive him to it by firing him).

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Jonathan

Even allowing for the formalities of the time, I think you're reading far too much into the cricket club minutes...pity it isn't down to the shade of Shane Warne's nose!

Sorry!

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Dave

You have it backwards.

The club's player and member of admin. was allegedly abroad, he can no longer perform his duties, he did not do the decent thing and resign, and so he was fired. Later they realised they were dealing with a person who was tragically deranged, and they recorded their condolences.

I am not reading into the Cricket Club's words anything more than what they have written (eg. I am not claiming it is a gentleman's euphemism for Druitt having got into sexual 'serious trouble', and so on).

It's others who are doing that, and have done so for many years without challenge because it has been the conventional wisdom to always interpret bits and pieces about this suspect as showing that 1) Mac knew almost nothing about the real Montie, and 2) the latter was a tragic innocent who killed himself because he was gay, and was probably driven to suicide by the homophobia of the era, or variations on that theme -- often treated by some as a definitely, ascertained fact.

That an innocent, though sexually tormented man was posthumously shanghaied into the Jack the Ripper mystery by a homophobic Chief Constable Magoo, and it is nothing less than the duty of modern, progressive researchers to right this historical wrong.

I would also advise people to not consider fragments in austere isolation as of course they are open to all sorts of varying interpretations, but to ground a theory in trying to match disparate sources together.

To do that you have to, in my opinion, factor in Mac sources which are often neglected: his 1913 comments, his 1914 memoirs, and his briefing Sims on material which though deflectively fictitious, are clearly derived from the real Druitt.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

Have you ever considered the idea that Macnaghten may simply have been lying about the Druitt scenario?

Regards,

Simon

[Cogidubnus]

Stumped

To Dave

You have it backwards

.

I'm mighty glad to hear that mate!

It's others who are doing that, and have done so for many years without challenge because it has been the conventional wisdom to always interpret bits and pieces about this suspect

I agree...

Dave

[jason_c]

To Jason

When you write that you have 'little doubt' does that mean you have no doubt, or maybe that you are almost certain, just like Melville Macnaghten -- who uses the same phrase in his Report(s)?

The reality is that the cricket club had humiliated a fellow gent. Hit him right where he lived in his stuffy, bourgeoisie world -- a world critical to a Victorian man's rep and success especially as a barrister.

And he was not suspended, he was fired.

They were not unsure as to his whereabouts, a completely different matter, as he had gone abroad and could not perform his duties.

The club management thought they knew where Druitt was and this mis-information may have come from Druitt himself, verbally or written, and it was -- understandably -- unacceptable that he continue in his offices if he was absconding abroad for some indefinite period.

Yet he not resigning[/I], the proper course of action -- just as he did not resign from the school -- so they were left with no choice, like Valentine.

In all Druitt primary sources, bar two, these events were considered so trivial that they were not mentioned.

The important element here is that the long-standing conventional wisdom on all this -- very shaky anyhow because it rested on the slender reed that we know more about Druitt than Macnaghten -- regarding the date of Dec 30th really being Nov 30th, eg. sacked whilst alive, is shown to be just as likely as Dec 13th; referring to when the brother arrived at the school.

And that Druitt may have been sacked because he was AWOL, an embarrassing detail for the school which morphed into the more positive claim that the headmaster also received a note 'alluding' to suicide (eg. I did not drive him to it by firing him).

Jonathan,

With regards to "little doubt" it means neither of us were there and our sources are limited to one document. Going abroad was a well used term for going awol or leaving without explanation. I can give various examples if needed.

The cricket club did not humiliate Druitt. A club needs to function. A Treasurer and Secretary were needed. The issue had to be addressed by the committee. It was then addressed in a dry document without undue criticism leveled at Druitt. He was a friend and colleague of many years. What went said behind the scenes we can only speculate. I suspect a lot of juicy gossip went unrecorded.

Note the statement was "gone abroad", a well known euphemism for disappearing. It did not say "travelled abroad" "visited abroad" "visited France" "visited the continent" "holidaying abroad" "vacationing abroad" "touring abroad" "recuperating abroad" or "taking the air abroad". It is "gone abroad" recorded in the minutes.

[Jonathan H]

Druitt as Trojan Horse?

To Simon

You know, somebody on the other site reads my stuff, perhaps everybody's, with very keen eyes and has a rapid response ready worthy of a Republican campaign machine.

The reason I start by mentioning that is because they will know the answer to your question already:

Yes, I have.

I have speculated several times, on these boards and just the other day with Tom, that Macnaghten may have taken three minor, Ripper suspects -- if suspects at all? -- and sexed them up for public consumption, anonymously, via credulous cronies.

One of them, the drowned doctor, was the most likely, yet the elements that supposedly proved how super this suspect was were not true of Druitt: a medical man with anatomical knowledge, hunted by police in 1888 and almost arrested, and rich and idle enough to have the opportunity to strike at East End harlots at will, and who took his own life after Miller's Ct (which was true of Druitt but not immediately after and not because any police net was fast closing).

But these elements do broadly match Dr. Tumblety, which is the overarching point that Littlechild is, somewhat inadvertently, making to Sims in 1913.

The jarring element here is that for some reason Littlechild seems to have thought that Dr T was 'believed' to have killed himself?

Who told him that? It sounds like a rumour discovered later? Was it affable Mac?

Did Mac self-servingly graft onto the American, a genuine Ripper suspect, this bit from the English barrister, who was barely a suspect at all, because it made for a more satisfying tale?

The Victorian Tumblety dead-end inverted, for Edwardians, into the nearly successful arrest of the mad medico who, appropriately, hurled himself into a river -- practically pushed into the Thames by super-efficient detectives?

Mac's [alleged] comment to Tom Divall about the Ripper being a man who fled to the States after the Kelly murder and who died in a lunatic asylum, could show the evolution of this suspect fusion of Tumblety-Druitt-Kosminski -- yet still a work-in-progress.

Furthermore, how reliable and definitive can a primary source (Mac) possibly be if you are simultaneously arguing that the same source is deliberately deflective, deceitful, and dissembling ...?

[Jonathan H]

To Jason C

We will have to agree to disagree.

The important thing is that I have shown that the problematic date of a primary source can be interpreted differently, and thus it throws into doubt that Druitt was sacked while alive (and there is a handy precedent: he was sacked, while dead, from his local sporting club).

I thank Chris G, whom I disagree with about most aspects, for agreeing that this was a fresh and plausible sub-theory.

I would still ask you to step back and to consider these scraps in the context of other primary sources of the era about Druitt being 'Jack'.

Because if I am right, or rather if Mac is right, then this is not a sideline, not a footnote, and not a red herring.

It's the core of the mystery.

How would you honestly feel, Jason C, if another primary source turned up which showed this supposedly long discredited, Edwardian solution was very likely to be true of a Victorian mystery?

[lynn cates]

Whether 'tis nobler . . .

Hello Jonathan.

"Furthermore, how reliable and definitive can a primary source (Mac) possibly be if you are simultaneously arguing that the same source is deliberately deflective, deceitful, and dissembling ...?"

Aye, that's the rub.

Cheers.
LC

[jason_c]

To Jason C

We will have to agree to disagree.

The important thing is that I have shown that the problematic date of a primary source can be interpreted differently, and thus it throws into doubt that Druitt was sacked while alive (and there is a handy precedent: he was sacked, while dead, from his local sporting club).

I thank Chris G, whom I disagree with about most aspects, for agreeing that this was a fresh and plausible sub-theory.

I would still ask you to step back and to consider these scraps in the context of other primary sources of the era about Druitt being 'Jack'.

Because if I am right, or rather if Mac is right, then this is not a sideline, not a footnote, and not a red herring.

It's the core of the mystery.

How would you honestly feel, Jason C, if another primary source turned up which showed this supposedly long discredited, Edwardian solution was very likely to be true of a Victorian mystery?

Jonathan,

Im not sure what you mean by this, can you elaborate?

Looking at the gone abroad statement again it does seem to have historically described travelling to foreign countries more often than I previously realised. Still, there are plenty examples of it not meaning such.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=V...oad%22&f=false

"A mad spirit has gone abroad among our populace"


Or, this from Robinson Crusoe:

"However, as the two men had also a design upon them, as I have said, though a much fairer one than that of burning and murdering, it happened, and very luckily for them all, that they were up and gone abroad[disappearing] before the bloody-minded rogues came to their huts."

I believe "foreign parts" is an accurate meaning of the phrase "gone abroad".

[Jonathan H]

To Jason C

Umm .. you've got more pertinent examples than these -- right ...?