Frantic Friends?

[jason_c]

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U...peared&f=false

"It appears that in a parish to the northward of Dunkeld, a suspicion had gone abroad, that in a particular family"

This is a very domestic use of the word "abroad". These examples are pertinent enough. Every one of them pre dates the LVP. They show "abroad" did not necessarily mean going to a foreign country. Outwith a certain localized area seems to be the main definition. Only as the world grew smaller abroad did "abroad" turn into a country outside the UK. How modern do you expect the language used in the minutes of a cricketing committee to be?

[Jonathan H]

To Lynn

Yes, fair enough.

The reason I don't agree with my own rebuttal is partly acknowledged bias (Mac adorartion) and partly historical methodology.

1. Druitt-as-Jack begins in the extant record -- albeit un-named -- among his people in Dorset, whereas 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog begin with Mac.

2. Mac's memoirs, the only public document about the Ripper under his own name, pull back from the gentlemanly deceit on a number of key points: he drops the window-dressing suspects altogether, and concede that the likely killer was not the subject of a police hunt in 1888, or the following year, or maybe the year after that either.

Embarrassingly, the police had been chasing a phantom.

Mac seems to be saying (in his 1913 comments) that [the un-named] Druitt is his secret, not the state's, and it will will 'perish' with him, which makes sense of the other police sources who do not agree, eg. they don't know..

In effect Mac de-Tumbletyised the 'Simon Pure' figure of his memoirs, similar to what Littlechild was doing, though in the opposite direction, in his letter to Sims.

3. Mac's providing Sims with the point about the 'friends' hunting for the 'doctor' shows that he knew more about the real Druitt than he revealed in his agenda-dominated Report(s). Also, his memoirs pointedly disagree that the killer killed himself 'the same evening' as the final murder; arguably the police chief knew more than the loose-lipped politician about the real 'curious story' because he had properly investigated it.

I quite appreciaite if you feel that's all not strong enough to counter Mac's essential unreliability as a primary source.

[Jonathan H]

To Jason C

So .. that's a no? You've got bugger all.

[jason_c]

To Jason C

So .. that's a no? You've got bugger all.

Here's another:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6...peared&f=false

"the melancholy account of this daring and outrageous abduction had gone abroad through the whole parish"


Not a foreign country in sight in the above quote.

[Jonathan H]

Yeah ... hmmm. how ii can out this. These examples are not strong, mate.

I thought you were going to show me examples of this euphemism as meaning that gent had got himself into a spot of bother and had to lie low, like Wilde was expected to actually head for Paris to avoid being 'safely caged'.

These are not examples from official records, from people who are not being literary and artistic so to speak.

Is is so much simpler to simply accept that they -- wrongly -- thought Druitt had gone overseas. He had not resigned so they had to sack him. Later they realised the 'true' state of affairs: a fatal melancholia.

But I understand how psychologically important this all is for you. If you concede this then God what's next?

That the family 'believed' he was the fiend? That Macnaghten knew that Farquharason was wrong about him killing himself the same night as the final murder?

For you, it's the thin end of the wedge ...

[jason_c]

Yeah ... hmmm. how ii can out this. These examples are not strong, mate.

I thought you were going to show me examples of this euphemism as meaning that gent had got himself into a spot of bother and had to lie low, like Wilde was expected to actually head for Paris to avoid being 'safely caged'.

These are not examples from official records, from people who are not being literary and artistic so to speak.

Is is so much simpler to simply accept that they -- wrongly -- thought Druitt had gone overseas. He had not resigned so they had to sack him. Later they realised the 'true' state of affairs: a fatal melancholia.

But I understand how psychologically important this all is for you. If you concede this then God what's next?

That the family 'believed' he was the fiend? That Macnaghten knew that Farquharason was wrong about him killing himself the same night as the final murder?

For you, it's the thin end of the wedge ...

Im didnt suggest that "gone abroad" was a euphemism for getting oneself in trouble. I said the committee used "going abroad" instead of an overtly critical comment of Druitt.

The word "abroad" could be used as locally or as internationally as one liked.

I've given you the quote from Daniel Defoe which indicates that gone abroad was used as a term for removing oneself from a specific area rather than a country.

"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 before the bloody-minded rogues came to their huts."

[Jonathan H]

To Jason C

The examples you give are weak as they are literary, and thus do not convince as comparable to the formal records of an association.

I can only think that a very entrenched bias against Druitt as the fiend could lead you to propose such examples as a strong argument.

We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

I also cannot help but notice that you ignore everything else I write here on this thread about this subject, but that is your right.

[jason_c]

To Jason C

The examples you give are weak as they are literary, and thus do not convince as comparable to the formal records of an association.

I can only think that a very entrenched bias against Druitt as the fiend could lead you to propose such examples as a strong argument.

We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

I also cannot help but notice that you ignore everything else I write here on this thread about this subject, but that is your right.

Well, unless you can prove the committee received information about Druitt having moved to foreign climbs its your case that is weak. It's a fact that gone abroad was used not only for foreign adventures but also domestic British movement.

And the reason I do not comment on much of your other comments are:

1 Im typing with an on screen keyboard which makes any in-depth posting difficult.
2 Your arguments are fairly convoluted and difficult to follow.

[ChrisGeorge]

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".

Hi Jason

"A mad spirit has gone abroad among our populace" is the same as saying there is a disease or something else abroad in the country. It has nothing to do with leaving for a foreign country -- it's another expression entirely. But if you said a person was "going abroad" or had "gone abroad" in late Victorian Britain -- a common thing at the time, given the availability of passage either to the outposts of the far-flung empire and to other lands -- I believe it would mean just that, not leaving for another city or town.

One of my research interests, the suicided Jewish policeman Richard Brown, before he did away with himself a week after the Kelly murder, variously spoke of going to Africa, Mexico, or California, but he could have just as easily said he was "going abroad" and those hearing him say that would have expected that is what he meant -- to leave the country -- when he said it.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan H]

As Chris G has argued the onus is on you, Jason, to show how they did not man going abroad, and you have not.

The point is that once more the Old Paradigm is shown to be shaky.

Perhaps the reporter misheard November for December, but is it not more likely that he misheard 31st for 13th, especially from a toff accent.

Thus the notion that Druitt's dismissal triggered his disappearance -- which no source claims anyhow -- is more likely to be the other way round.

His vanishing caused his dismissal. There is a handy precendent: his cricket club, for some reason, thought Druitt had suddenly gone overseas, and had to fire him.

If you find my arguments convoluted then just consider these two sources which fit hand-in-glover and nothing else:

The 11 February 1891 edition of 'The Bristol Times and Mirror', found by Keith Skinner in august, 1991:

'I give a curious story for what it is worth. There is a West of England member who in private declares that he has solved the mystery of 'Jack the Ripper.' His theory - and he repeats it with so much emphasis that it might almost be called his doctrine - is that 'Jack the Ripper' committed suicide on the night of his last murder. I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it. He states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania. I do not know what the police think of the story, but I believe that before long a clean breast will be made, and that the accusation will be sifted thoroughly.'

and,


CHAPTER IV.
LAYING THE GHOST OF JACK THE RIPPER.

I'm not a butcher, I'm not a Yid,
Nor yet a foreign Skipper,
But I'm your own light-hearted friend,
Yours truly, Jack the Ripper."
ANONYMOUS.

THE Above queer verse was one of the first documents which I perused at Scotland Yard, for at that time the police post-bag bulged large with hundreds of anonymous communications on the subject of the East End tragedies. Although, as I shall endeavour to show in this chapter, the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November i888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer.

At the time, then, of my joining the Force on 1st June 1889, police and public were still agog over the tragedies of the previous autumn, and were quite ready to believe that any fresh murders, not at once elucidated, were by the same maniac's hand. Indeed, I remember three cases - two in 1888, and one early in 1891, which the Press ascribed to the so-called Jack the Ripper, to whom, at one time or another, some fourteen murders were attributed-some before, and some after, his veritable reign of terror in 1888.

On the morning of 9th November, Mary Jeanette Kelly, a comparatively young woman of some twenty-five years of age, and said to have been possessed of considerable. personal attractions, was found murdered in a room in Miller's Court, Dorset Street. This was the last of the series, and it was by far the most horrible ... There can be no doubt that in the room at Miller's Court the madman found ample scope for the opportunities he had all along been seeking, and the probability is that, after his awful glut on this occasion, his brain gave way altogether and he committed suicide ; otherwise the murders would not have ceased. The man, of course, was a sexual maniac, but such madness takes Protean forms, as will be shown later on in other cases. Sexual murders are the most difficult of all for police to bring home to the perpetrators, for motives there are none ; only a lust for blood, and in many cases a hatred of woman as woman. Not infrequently the maniac possesses a diseased body, and this was probably so in the case of the Whitechapel murderer. Many residents in the East End (and some in the West!) came under suspicion of police, but though several persons were detained, no one was ever charged with these offences.

Only last autumn I was very much interested in a book entitled The Lodger, which set forth in vivid colours what the Whitechapel murderer's life might have been while dwelling in London lodgings. The talented authoress portrayed him as a religious enthusiast, gone crazy over the belief that he was predestined to slaughter a certain number of unfortunate women, and that he had been confined in a criminal lunatic asylum and had escaped therefrom. I do not think that there was anything of religious mania about the real Simon Pure, nor do I believe that he had ever been detained in an asylum, nor lived in lodgings. I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people ; that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888, after he had knocked out a Commissioner of Police and very nearly settled the hash of one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State.


Note that Old Etonian Mac does not agree with fellow alumni, the un-named Henry Farquharson is claiming that the murderer killed himself on the same night, or same morning, suggesting that he has more thoroughly investigated the true tale than the politician.

[lynn cates]

directory

Hello Jonathan. Found this directory which may have the names of a few "frantic friends" of Druitt.

Is the "Post Office Sims" any relation to . . . ?

Cheers.
LC

http://www.opcdorset.org/TarrantFiles/T.Gunville/TarrantGunvilleDirs.htm

[jason_c]

Hi Jason

"A mad spirit has gone abroad among our populace" is the same as saying there is a disease or something else abroad in the country. It has nothing to do with leaving for a foreign country -- it's another expression entirely. But if you said a person was "going abroad" or had "gone abroad" in late Victorian Britain -- a common thing at the time, given the availability of passage either to the outposts of the far-flung empire and to other lands -- I believe it would mean just that, not leaving for another city or town.

One of my research interests, the suicided Jewish policeman Richard Brown, before he did away with himself a week after the Kelly murder, variously spoke of going to Africa, Mexico, or California, but he could have just as easily said he was "going abroad" and those hearing him say that would have expected that is what he meant -- to leave the country -- when he said it.

Best regards

Chris

Chris,

This is where I have my doubts. I can reasonably surmise that a cricket committee would not use the most modern of language. This not to suggest they were all Pickwickian, but they would have been well versed in past literature and terminology.

Given the fact that Druitt did disappear, and that Daniel Defoe uses "gone abroad" as a description of someone fleeing/disappearing I will reiterate my belief that gone abroad was meant by the committee this way.

If someone can provide evidence to me that Druitt briefly disappeared to the continent or that Lionel fobbed them off with an untrue account of Druitt's whereabouts then its a decent likelihood that "gone abroad" meant "fleeing" or moving outwith a certain localized area in this instance.


edit: "Gone abroad" is a different term to "going abroad". Going abroad will likely have been a less widely used term in the Victorian period than the term gone abroad.

[Jonathan H]

To Lynn'

Great stuff, thanks!

Jason, you're the one making it 'convoluted'.

The cricket club thught he was overseas, and yet he had not resigned -- and so he was fired. If they tought Druitt was missing, as in danger, they would have alerted the family, or even the police.

What on earth has Lionel Druitt got to do with it?

You're so 1970's/1980's on all this.

It's Montie's brother William who is doing the searching, and who becomes in Sims the frantic friends who strongly suspect that their medico pal is the Ripper.

[jason_c]

To Lynn'

Great stuff, thanks!

Jason, you're the one making it 'convoluted'.

The cricket club thught he was overseas, and yet he had not resigned -- and so he was fired. If they tought Druitt was missing, as in danger, they would have alerted the family, or even the police.

What on earth has Lionel Druitt got to do with it?

You're so 1970's/1980's on all this.

It's Montie's brother William who is doing the searching, and who becomes in Sims the frantic friends who strongly suspect that their medico pal is the Ripper.

I thought you suggested Lionel(or another family member) had told the committee Druitt was abroad. If you didnt then I apologize for mistaking that part of your argument.

[Jonathan H]

To Jason C

I had written that possibly William Druitt on Dec. 19th, or thereabouts, had let the cricket club know that his brother was abroad because he did not know where he was, or if he was dead or alive? eg. he was stalling.

More likely is that Montie himself spread it around that he had gone abroad. This got him sacked from his cricket club and probably from his school too.

'Since Friday ...' refers not to being dismissed but to when he confessed to an Anglican priest (who may have also been a family member) that he was the Ripper, and so the clock was ticking on his being sectioned -- and he knew it.

The Lionel Druitt angle comes from Dan Farson (1973) who did enormous, long-term damage to popular understanding of the mystery because he mis-remembered a supposedly clincher primary source, maybe by Lionel who had emigrated to Australia, in which the cousin had asserted that he fiend was Montie.

Now that's a 'convoluted' sub-tale.

To cut to the chase, Keith Skinner tracked down the likely source and it was about Deeming, not Druitt.

Before Farson in 1965, the American journalist Tom Cullen had written a more impressive work ('Autumn of Terror') but it too lacked a proper source bridging the 'Aberconway' version with Montague Druitt the tragically suicided barrister -- in terms of being a Ripper suspect.

Instead, Cullen was hoaxed -- or didn't care -- by Donald McCormick and his [non-existent] Dr. Dutton papers supposedly showing Albert Backert of the Vigilance Committee being told on the quiet by the police, in early 1889, that they knew the maniac had drowned himself (elements of McCormick's fiction ended up arguably contaminating the DNA of the fake 'Diary').

Apart from the source being of dubious provenance, a full reading of the primary sources would have shown that this is not at all how police acted after Kelly's murder, right up to Coles ' murder in early 1891.

A professional historian, with the time and resources, was needed and none were available. For the 'West of England' MP would have been inevitably discovered -- Farquharson is the real Druitt 'missing link' source -- and Tumblety would have also been quickly found in the American press; the real medico suspect being hunted by police in 1888.