M.P. Farquharson-Druitt -- A New Source

[caz]

4. Macnaghten says that the family believed in their member's guilt. I think that this is true because why else would Farquharson have believed. They believed him to be the Ripper because he was a sadist to the point of a dangerous mania. Nothing to with being gay. Montie's thing was East End harlots.

This is too much. Farqy convinced himself, and tried to convince anyone who would listen, that he had found the perfect pervert to have been the ripper - an alleged sex maniac who had allegedly killed himself immediately after Miller's Court. There is nothing to suggest that his malicious 'doctrine' was only entertained because of a similar belief expressed by the Druitt family about Monty. In any case, you said yourself the MP's tale 'was not first-hand'. So he could not have known the family believed anything of the sort.

You are now repeating your doctrine that 'Montie's thing was East End harlots' as gospel, and it won't do you any favours.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

What all these gents -- the family, the MP, the police chief -- may have sincerely misunderstood is that Montie was a delusional personality, not a sexual or homicidal maniac.

That while he did leave behind, say, blood-stained clothes, a confession to a reverend, and was absent from his night-warden duties at the school, this 'evidence' was not as damning and as conclusive as they thought.

I'd have thought the family had enough personal experience of delusional personalities to recognise this in Monty if he had been claiming to be the ripper. They presumably cottoned onto the fact that his mother wasn't really being electrocuted. And they understood that Monty feared he was going to be 'like mother'. How did that equate in their minds with him mutilating prostitutes?

The rest is mere assumption on your part. Either these people had reason to believe he enjoyed mutilating harlots (leaving aside the assumed blood stains, confession and absences) or they didn't.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jonathan H]

To Caz

Oh, I wasn't 'surprised' by the abuse at all. And I have never started such a alnging match, only defended myself upon assault. And as always with certain people they are comically indigant and affronted when you dare throw back the same kind of invective.

I had been warned by three different people from the boards that I could probably post whatever I liked, and not receive this kind of treatment, but not about Druitt being the Ripper!

That this would trigger what it has from certain quarters -- so, no surprises there.

Amusingly, even when I counter-argue my own theory, you disagree with me.

I saw years ago on the other site some guy who announced that he believed it was Druitt. He did not offer an argument as to why (understandably as it would not have cut any ice, of course) he just said he was exiting forever, and he did. As if he no longer believed in the Pope, and was leaving the Catholic fold!

I thought, blimey, I should not engage in the debates here at all.

But I'm glad I did, for there have been very good debates with many, and friendships made, and also the wonderful privilege of debating with distinguished writers whom I had long read and admired on the subject.

OK, just to wrap up here:

In the one Mac document, the official version of his Report, which a number of secondary sources -- some excellent -- claim is the only Mac source of any importance (and sometimes the only one included) he writes the following:

- Druitt was a minor, hearsay suspect who was known about in late 1888, or early 1889, against whom there was not even proof's shadow, yet he was more likely than Cutbush because hs brain turned to mush and he killed himself immediately after Kelly (all these claims can be shown to be untrue from other sources, but let's leave that to one side).

Mac then ends by contradicting himself about how good a suspect this is. That it was not just the timing of his suicide.

- Druitt was definitely a 'sexual maniac', and this is why his family 'believed' him to be Jack (which of course is much more than proof's shadow). The implication is that family belief in him as Jack preceded his self-murder.

Secondary sources use the first point to dismiss Druitt as a serious suspect, or as a suspect known in even the most basic facts by Macnaghten, and do not grasp the implications of the contradictory last line.

For the Druitts believed, not suspected ('Aberconway'), that their deceased member was Jack the Ripper because he was an erotic sadist aginst harlots (matching the MP's certainty, and every other Mac source by him or on his behalf).

It's a deliciously circular argument: we believed he was Jack the Ripepr because he was Jack the Ripper. Well, yes, I guess you would have no choice.

Mac put on file -- though in a document never sent -- that Druitt was certainly the Ripper to his nearest and dearest, and apparently with good reason.

No, it's got nothing to do with Druitt being homsexual, which is a modern, knee-jerk, politically-correct bias. Not a single source suggests he was gay, or if he was that this was a factor in anybody's thinking that he was Jack.

But some posters repeat it over and over as if this flimsy supposition is a fact, when it is arguably way off track.

Druitt's dismissal for 'serious trouble' has other possible explanations, none of them necessarily involving perverse or criminal behaviour including that he was sacked whilst dead and AWOL, he was sacked because he could not juggle two jobs, and so on, he was not sacked at all and it's an error not repeated by any other press account, or he was sacked for failing in his night-warden dutues -- if he had any?

In his memoirs, Mac has the fiend strangely 'absented' from his place of residence and yet does not repeat Sims' detail about being a recovering invalid. In fact, he pointedly denies that the un-named Druitt had even been sectioned -- and he had not been (it was his mother, but Montie feared he was 'going the same' way, eg. into a madhouse after perhaps confessing).

What you are doing is holding on to an old paradigm, one which was always shaky and which was arguably ended by the identification of the MP in 2008, as a link between the Druitts and Macnaghten.

Until then it had been argued that the police chief must have confused Druitt with somebody else (perhaps Sanders?) and had no source of 'private information' that could tell him accurate details about Montie.

Or that the memory of a police chief known for his extraordinary powers of recall had inexplicably failed him about a case of which he was obsessed. Yet this memory malfunction by sheer happy coincidence helped shield 'a good family'.

And I am supposed to make up stuff??

Mac's faulty memory was always a remarkably slender reed to build the entire edifice of Ripperology upon, and it started, ironically, with Cullen in 1965 (who did not care because his hard-nosed Marxism pushed him towards a bourgeoisie, Oxonian terrorist. Who cares if he's a doctor or a barrister?)

The paradigm is arguably over since Farquharson's identification, but then Mac's 1914 memoirs, albeit opaque, arguably contain no 'errors' about Druitt at all.

The 'West of England' MP's identification also meant that Druitt as a Ripper suspect really did predate Macnaghten, as he claimed in both the official and non-official verions: it began with his family.

Could they have all been mistaken? Of course. But I don't think the affable Macnaghten would have made such a ghastly error unless the evidence was compelling.

[Jonathan H]

Look at this, from the other site;

First there is my last post, and with the rapid fire response worthy of a ruthless, political campaign it is instantly rebuked and debunked:

I saw years ago on the other site some guy who announced that he believed it was Druitt. He did not offer an argument as to why (understandably as it would not have cut any ice, of course) he just said he was exiting forever, and he did. As if he no longer believed in the Pope, and was leaving the Catholic fold!

A poster on another site
*********************************

"Inspector 173" was the member in question and having spent years studying the case simply decided to retire from Message Board Ripperology.
It is as simple as that and in fact, Mr. Dodd helped Ivor and myself and Tim set up a Ripper website back in 2002 or 2003...JTR Worldwide.

Everyone is free to present or promote their theories on the Case here on the Forums.

WE all know that here, but in case someone read the top paragraph over there and took it to heart, then they might get cold feet should they wish to present their suspect-theory over here at some point.


Notice how I am not named even though my name is here and there, but the person who wanted to remain anonymous is outed.

If anyone takes the trouble to re-read the posts by 'Inspector 173' you make up your own mind as to why that so impressed me as a warning.

Of course I could have been wrong, but I can only go on what I am reading by people I do now know backed by warnings from others.

It's like, here it comes ...

[caz]

Morning Jonathan,

Just to clear something up, in case anyone gets the wrong impression from your latest posts, you are not accusing me of 'abuse', 'assault', 'invective' or 'this kind of treatment', are you? I have enjoyed reading and responding and asking you questions (within my own limited grasp of the facts), but will happily leave you to it if you find my responses offensive in any way.

- Druitt was definitely a 'sexual maniac', and this is why his family 'believed' him to be Jack (which of course is much more than proof's shadow). The implication is that family belief in him as Jack preceded his self-murder.

But in Mac's stated opinion and mine, this isn't proof's shadow, let alone 'much more'. Proof's shadow would be placing Druitt in Whitechapel at the right time; finding a knife that could be the murder weapon among his effects; having no doubt at all that his family were convincedthat he was the WM.

As it is, there must have been hundreds of men with secretive private lives and dubious sexual habits, whose friends or families were worried they might be the ripper, especially if they went missing or ended up committing suicide. No shadow of proof against any of them, as Mac would rightly have had to admit. It's your opinion only that Mac knew more, or ever had actual evidence that Druitt 'was an erotic sadist aginst harlots' and that his family had somehow found this out.

There appear to be two separate branches of 'evidence' being discussed here. One is that Monty was known to be an erotic sadist against harlots (how that could have been known, beyond the circular argument, is yet to be established); the other is the circumstantial stuff like alleged blood stains, an alleged confession to a priest and the known mental problems which may or may not have lost him his job at the school.

I think we can perhaps rule out unauthorised absences that included or coincided with the murder nights. It would only have taken one bright spark at the school to wonder why "Sir" kept going AWOL and had then left under a cloud never to return, and the rumours would have gone round like wildfire.

Could they have all been mistaken? Of course. But I don't think the affable Macnaghten would have made such a ghastly error unless the evidence was compelling.

That assumes they were all certain to begin with, which is a circular argument on your part. I strongly suspect the MP was the only one with a personal 'doctrine' as such, while the family would have tried to keep any suspicions 'in the family', and Mac made no 'ghastly error' if this was just the theory he found the most satisfactory to explain the murders and how they came to an end.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Morning Jonathan,

Just to clear something up, in case anyone gets the wrong impression from your latest posts, you are not accusing me of 'abuse', 'assault', 'invective' or 'this kind of treatment', are you? I have enjoyed reading and responding and asking you questions (within my own limited grasp of the facts), but will happily leave you to it if you find my responses offensive in any way.

- Druitt was definitely a 'sexual maniac', and this is why his family 'believed' him to be Jack (which of course is much more than proof's shadow). The implication is that family belief in him as Jack preceded his self-murder.

But in Mac's stated opinion and mine, this isn't proof's shadow, let alone 'much more'. Proof's shadow would be placing Druitt in Whitechapel at the right time; finding a knife that could be the murder weapon among his effects; having no doubt at all that his family were convincedthat he was the WM.

As it is, there must have been hundreds of men with secretive private lives and dubious sexual habits, whose friends or families were worried they might be the ripper, especially if they went missing or ended up committing suicide. No shadow of proof against any of them, as Mac would rightly have had to admit. It's your opinion only that Mac knew more, or ever had actual evidence that Druitt 'was an erotic sadist aginst harlots' and that his family had somehow found this out.

There appear to be two separate branches of 'evidence' being discussed here. One is that Monty was known to be an erotic sadist against harlots (how that could have been known, beyond the circular argument, is yet to be established); the other is the circumstantial stuff like alleged blood stains, an alleged confession to a priest and the known mental problems which may or may not have lost him his job at the school.

I think we can perhaps rule out unauthorised absences that included or coincided with the murder nights. It would only have taken one bright spark at the school to wonder why "Sir" kept going AWOL and had then left under a cloud never to return, and the rumours would have gone round like wildfire.

Could they have all been mistaken? Of course. But I don't think the affable Macnaghten would have made such a ghastly error unless the evidence was compelling.

That assumes they were all certain to begin with, which is a circular argument on your part. I strongly suspect the MP was the only one with a personal 'doctrine' as such, while the family would have tried to keep any suspicions 'in the family', and Mac made no 'ghastly error' if this was just the theory he found the most satisfactory to explain the murders and how they came to an end.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Morning Jonathan,

Just to clear something up, in case anyone gets the wrong impression from your latest posts, you are not accusing me of 'abuse', 'assault', 'invective' or 'this kind of treatment', are you? I have enjoyed reading and responding and asking you questions (within my own limited grasp of the facts), but will happily leave you to it if you find my responses offensive in any way.

- Druitt was definitely a 'sexual maniac', and this is why his family 'believed' him to be Jack (which of course is much more than proof's shadow). The implication is that family belief in him as Jack preceded his self-murder.

But in Mac's stated opinion and mine, this isn't proof's shadow, let alone 'much more'. Proof's shadow would be placing Druitt in Whitechapel at the right time; finding a knife that could be the murder weapon among his effects; having no doubt at all that his family were convincedthat he was the WM.

As it is, there must have been hundreds of men with secretive private lives and dubious sexual habits, whose friends or families were worried they might be the ripper, especially if they went missing or ended up committing suicide. No shadow of proof against any of them, as Mac would rightly have had to admit. It's your opinion only that Mac knew more, or ever had actual evidence that Druitt 'was an erotic sadist aginst harlots' and that his family had somehow found this out.

There appear to be two separate branches of 'evidence' being discussed here. One is that Monty was known to be an erotic sadist against harlots (how that could have been known, beyond the circular argument, is yet to be established); the other is the circumstantial stuff like alleged blood stains, an alleged confession to a priest and the known mental problems which may or may not have lost him his job at the school.

I think we can perhaps rule out unauthorised absences that included or coincided with the murder nights. It would only have taken one bright spark at the school to wonder why "Sir" kept going AWOL and had then left under a cloud never to return, and the rumours would have gone round like wildfire.

Could they have all been mistaken? Of course. But I don't think the affable Macnaghten would have made such a ghastly error unless the evidence was compelling.

That assumes they were all certain to begin with, which is a circular argument on your part. I strongly suspect the MP was the only one with a personal 'doctrine' as such, while the family would have tried to keep any suspicions 'in the family', and Mac made no 'ghastly error' if this was just the theory he found the most satisfactory to explain the murders and how they came to an end.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jonathan H]

To Caz

The very fact that you have to ask, means that you are unaware of what rude and infantile replies -- the worst kind of doctrinaire buffdom -- some posters have over the years, written to me here, and on the other site.

I'm not saying you should be aware, just that you are under-estimating how much certain people fell right into line with the predicted abuse, and I can see why that other guy who favoured Druitt simply left.

I am not saying there have not been productive exhanges, and I am not saying that I am the only one who cops it -- far from it.

But do you really think there are not vile people here whose behaviour is appalling? Perhaps you think yes, just you. I would disagree.

We will also have to agree to disagree about our interpretation of the limited and contradictory sources, but that does not mean anybody has to be disagreeable.

To me the whole 'drowned doctor' machinations (partly inspired by the Tumblety fumble) are a deliberate red herring which, today, obscures a straight-forward tale:

Jack the Ripper is not a mystery, and has not been for a single police chief since about 1891.

The real murderer had confessed to a priest and his family found this confession to be credible. Years later the secret leaked (to the local MP) and a police chief made a private, posthumous and unofficial investigation -- and found this evidence to be compelling too.

The broad outlines of the fiend's identity -- a tormented, Gentile, English toff -- were disseminated to the public from 1898 to 1917.

The police chief's comments in retirement and memoirs, within the bounds of propriety, revealed that the fruitless hunt for this phantom had gone on for years, that Jack's identity had been his 'secret', that the real murderer had not 'confessed' to doctors in an asylum, nor was he ncecessarily a medical man himself, and nor did he melodramatically kill himself immediately after the final murder like some of deranged automaton (though the final murder did leave him in a tormented state). He was also the only suspect worth mentioning.

These revelations were mostly missed, and did not get traction.

And so ... in 1923, a right-wing, best-selling alarmist rebooted the case as a mystery whom no policeman had solved, or come close to solving.

And here we are today ...

As for Druitt being sacked as night-warden, actually I agree.

I think this is possible but less likely because Mac revealed it.

Though I disagree that anybody at the Blackheath school would have linked Druitt with the Whitechapel murders even if his being 'absented' had coincided every time, because that was so outlandish a notion. They just would have thought a young man, with two jobs, was out on the town, or at his other place of business -- simple as that.

I think that more likely is that Mac's 'absented' is a veiled reference to being missing in the aftermath of the Kelly murder (and that this is what got him sacked).

That it is not an error, as surmised, about being sacked for 'serious trouble' on Dec 30th. This single 1889 source is assumed to have meant Nov 30th, but maybe it didn't?

Druitt was sacked -- with his belongiings still at the school -- because he had left word he had 'gone abroad' (as his cricket club sacked him for the same reason: AWOL) when he was supposed to be still doing things at the school after term had finished. That is why he was 'sacked' rather than allowed to resign: because he was AWOL.

The next day his body turned up in the Thames and this was all terribly embarrasing for Valentime, and so nobody else mentioned it except the single, indiscreet and clumsy source which forgets to even name the deceased.

[Jonathan H]

To Caz

My previous reply to you does not appear, except when you go to post-reply -- at least for me?

Re: 'Laying the Ghost ...' (1914)

I think that Macnaghten would not reveal so much that Druitt could possibly be recognised among the respectable circles in which his family moved, or to his neighbours in Dorset, or to the boys he once taught who knew well of his tragic suicide in the Thames. But he wanted to put it in such a way that if you were in-the-know you could see it was Druitt.

For those who knew of the family tragedy in those circles, and still remembered twenty-six years later, Druitt was a young barrister who had inexplicably killed himself in the Thames on about Dec 1st 1888.

So, the barrister part was out, teaching at a boys school was out, the Thames was out, and drowning was out, and committing suicide in December was out too.

I think that if Druitt had night-warden duties at the school, and was 'absented' for the murders' -- and this is what got him sacked -- then that would have to go to.

Instead Mac reveals that, yes, he was 'absented' at the time of the murders suggesting the reverse, that he was not. It is thus, I think, a variation of Druitt being missing at the time of the final murder -- only.

Druitt was not a lodger according to Mac and this is technically true as he was not like the character in Lownde's best seller, or Forbes Winslow's madman.

But Druitt did lodge at the school perhaps without having to pay, so not a 'lodger' but in effect he was a lodger of sorts.

He lived with his 'people', which is true in the broadest sense that he lived at the location of his lesser vocation with people -- masters, servants, students -- connected to it.

All of that, of course, would give the superficial and misleading impression that Druitt lived with his family, who noticed that he was suspiciously absent.

But he did not want to lie and so did not write 'home', did not write 'friends' and repudiated that he had been 'detained' in a mental institution, or that he was the subject of a police dragnet in 1888, or that he killed himself within hours of the Kelly murder.

It was a delciate balancing act and yet he had 'cut the knot to keep everyone satisfied'. That's my theory.

[caz]

Hi Jonathan,

Sorry about the treble post. I think the site was having a few problems.

I wasn't 'under-estimating' anything. I merely sought reassurance that you were not including me among those you accuse of 'predicted abuse' and worse.

But do you really think there are not vile people here whose behaviour is appalling? Perhaps you think yes, just you. I would disagree.

Where did you get that from? Of course I have seen some appalling behaviour on the boards in the thirteen or so years that I have been around, but I didn't think it applied to our current discussion!

Yes, let's agree to disagree about our interpretation of the limited and contradictory sources. I never meant to come across as 'disagreeable' and I don't think you have been either.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Just one more question, if I may, because I'm not sure you have really addressed it:

If the family had somehow got hold of the idea that Monty's 'thing' was sexual violence, 'specifically' towards prostitutes -

a) how do you think they might have come by this very specific and highly damaging information? They couldn't check his computer for mucky S&M images.

b) how and why do you think it leaked beyond the family and eventually to the ears of that despicable busybody, Farqy?

I'd have thought the boys at Monty's school were more likely than anyone to pick up on his 'interests', if true, and then blab about it to all and sundry. I just can't imagine the family talking about it to anyone outside.

Love,

Caz
X

[Cogidubnus]

Dates?

Druitt was sacked -- with his belongiings still at the school -- because he had left word he had 'gone abroad' (as his cricket club sacked him for the same reason: AWOL) when he was supposed to be still doing things at the school after term had finished. That is why he was 'sacked' rather than allowed to resign: because he was AWOL.

The next day his body turned up in the Thames and this was all terribly embarrasing for Valentime, and so nobody else mentioned it except the single, indiscreet and clumsy source which forgets to even name the deceased.

Hi Jonathan

It was my understanding that on 19th November, (10 days post-MJK) Druitt attended his Cricket Club's regular board meeting and indeed proposed the acquisition of some additional land...Not in pieces and sacked by that date then....

On 22nd November, in his legal capacity, he was in court on an appeal concerning the family business - which he won...Not in pieces and away from his chambers by that date either...

In fact, according to Paul Begg, (from whose "The Facts" these dates come), he wasn't dismissed from Valentines until roughly 30th November...

Then and only then he disappears...three weeks after MJKs death...a bit late for a summary dismissal because of JtR absences (or, indeed for accusations of sexual abuse)...Also a bit late for it being remorse over MJK being "Friday's events" or whatever the exact phrase was...

...And it is only three weeks into this absence on 21st December that the Cricket Club (gone abroad was, I think, the term they used) removed him from the post of Honorary Secretary and Treasurer...

Sorry...still not convinced...but still waiting with bated breath (I like this thread!).

Cheers

Dave

[Jonathan H]

Figleaf?

No, no, I didn't mean you, I meant others.

You just seemed to be saying that I had never been attacked, when I have been, and I can take it because 1) I have been through this before, and 2) there are people like yourself engaged in courteous debate to make it worthwhile.

I think that the North Country Vicar tale of 1899 is about Druitt but it might not be, just an incredible co-incidence, but they do happen.

Theorising that it is Druitt -- which nobody else will do -- then he confessed to a priest, who might be John Henry Lonsdale, who was a neighbour at all relevant Druitt locations, a barrister and reverend, and maybe the un-identified 'friend' who tipped off William Druitt that his brother was AWOL, and may have also tipped him off about the confession.

In Sims, the veiled source for much of this, the priest becomes, I argue, the physicians to whom the 'mad doctor' confessed that he wanted to kill harlots rather than a clergyman to whom he had confessed that he had done these crimes.

Once Druitt did this then the clock was ticking for him to 'go like mother': sectioned in an asylum, and instead he tried to take his own life but make it look as if he had absconded rather than committed yet another mortal sin.

It failed.

Now people with terrible secrets, especially if the deceased made the person promise that they must reveal the truth in a decade, can leak.

Leaks happen all the time. The more astonishing aspect of this whole affair is how well the lid was mostly kept on.

Or Druitt confessed to his cousin, Charles, who was also a priest and which keeps it in the family. But again it only takes one act of loose lips to sink ships ('Whitchurch' Canacorium becoming the 'Whitchurch Murders' of the Vicar's tale).

Farquharson is a fellow near-neighbour, and a fellow Tory, and so this suggests that the tale has arrived along the local constituency grapevinei in Dorset.

The facts, coming second or third-hand, have been telescoped into a murder and self-murder the same night: a confession in deed rather than in word, although we do not know that the priestly confession is not part of the whole tale being held back by the regional press.

The MP felt no loyalty to the Druitts to not share the tale with his ten best friends, again suggesting he has not been sworn to secrecy by them, and it continued to leak the full tabloid tsunami held back only by the libel laws and the sudden resurgence of the Ripper in London, via Coles and Sadler.

Whereas, Mac has a better sense of the truth about the timing of murder and self-murder (1914) -- eg. not the same evening -- and that William Druitt was frantically trying to find his missing sibling because he, by then, believed that he was Jack the Ripper (Sims, 1903, 1907).

I don't think the family thought Montie was a sexual sadist before they 'believed' he was the fiend. I think that it is the other way round, hence the circular nature of what Mac reveals in the official version of his Report.

Montie confessed to a man of the cloth, blood-stained clothes were found, and there was no alibi, therefore he was Jack and must be sectioned as swiftly as possible.

They may have all been wrong, but I think they would have wanted to be wrong; to be dealing with a delusional member of their own family, but instead they 'believed', and the MP remained 'adamant', and Macnaghten 'knew'.

That's as close as we can get, which historically is enough because historical opinions are inherently provisional.

To Dave

Yes, Druitt was 'Protean' as Mac writes in 1914; he could appear perfectly normal, and going about his business, when he was secretly tormented by the 'awful glut' of Miller's Ct. and beginning to unravel.

I think that once Druitt vanished on about Dec 3rd, he was sacked by the school on December 30th, as the press account states, for the 'serious trouble' of being AWOL -- just as his cricket club sacked him for the same reason (a mere club take note).

These are Macnaghten's words in the only document with his name on it for public consumption regarding the gap between Kelly and Druitt's suicide:


' ... 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.'

' ... 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 ...'

' ... 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.'

' ... 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.'

The 'soon after' matches the Vicar, which Sims had so rudely and strenuously disagreed with in terms of the self-murder being immediate, and the 'diseased body' also matches the epileptic mania of the cleric's story.

Plus, remember that Mac knew from just PC Moulson's report about the body's retrieval -- that it was found floating in Chiswick! That's too far for the same night of murder and self-murder and nobody noticing.

The story is a melodramatic figleaf, and his memoirs show that he knew it.

[Jonathan H]

'Soon after ...'

Sorry, re: the previous reply, I forgot to highlight a relevant bit:

Here is the [un-named] North Country Vicar using wording which is interpreted to mean that there was a gap of more than a few hours after the Kelly murder and before Jacke took his own life, enough to confess to a priest:

Western Mail
19 January 1899

WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?

We have received (says the Daily Mail) from a clergyman of the Church of England, now a North Country vicar, an interesting communication ...
"I received information in professional confidence, with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification.
The murderer was a man of good position and otherwise unblemished character, who suffered from epileptic mania, and is long since deceased.
... The vicar enclosed a narrative, which he called "The Whitechurch (sic) Murders - Solution of a London Mystery." This he described as "substantial truth under fictitious form." ... all that our reporter could learn was that the rev. gentleman appears to know with certainty the identity of the most terrible figure in the criminal annals of our times, and that the vicar does not intend to let anyone else into the secret.
The murderer died, the vicar states, very shortly after committing the last murder. The vicar obtained his information from a brother clergyman, to whom a confession was made ... The only other item which a lengthy chat with the vicar could elicit was that the murderer was a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End - eventually his victims; and that the assassin was at one time a surgeon.'

And here is Dagonet/Sims' rapid-fire response to quash the Vicar, repeating the tale quite inaccurately and pompously (with the real Druitt matching the cleric and not the famous crime writer) and in a way which is pro-police:

'The Referee', January 22, 1899.

'There are bound to be various revelations concerning Jack the Ripper as the years go on. This time it is a vicar who heard his dying confession. I have no doubt a great many lunatics have said they were Jack the Ripper on their death-beds. It is a good exit, and when the dramatic instinct is strong in a man he always wants an exit line, especially when he isn't coming on in the little play of "Life" any more ... but I don't quite see how the real Jack could have confessed, seeing that he committed suicide after the horrible mutilation of the woman in the house in Dorset-street, Spitalfields. The full details of that crime have never been published - they never could be. Jack, when he committed that crime, was in the last stage of the peculiar mania from which he suffered. He had become grotesque in his ideas as well as bloodthirsty. Almost immediately after this murder he drowned himself in the Thames. his name is perfectly well known to the police. If he hadn't committed suicide he would have been arrested.'

And here is Macnaghten in 1914 pulling back from the tale Sims has so melodramatically disseminated -- on his police pal's anonymous behalf -- to the public for over a decade, now carefully echoing the forgotten Vicar rather than his own crony/mouth-piece:

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.

Same wording.

In the same chapter, Mac confirms a longer gap by making it clear that the murderer killed Kelly sometime on the early morning of the 9th (if not the night before) and did not kill himself before the 10th, a loose twenty-fours later -- though it may have been longer?

Here we have a strange: a mystery in which the solution is known but you have to assess if the detective is viable as a source.

What I am doing is very similar to what some writers, who favour Anderson (and Swanson) and their preferred suspect, have done since the 1980's: argue that the conventional wisdom that these police sources are mostly unreliable is mostly wrong.

A major difference is that they agued for Anderson's essential honesty and competence (I agree) while I am arguing for Macnaghten's intermittent dishonesty (about certain matters) and competence.

[Cogidubnus]

melodramatic figleaf

As long as you live Jonathan, you'll never come up with another one like that!

Dave