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

[Stephen Thomas]

Ben Mark Two.

[Jonathan H]

To Dave

Then how about this one:

Swanson's marginalia, since he seems to have told nobody about the notation, is as furtive and private an act as, well, masturbation ...

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

Your post is so-oooo tempting.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

Then yield to temptation by all means, mate ...

To Stephen Thomas

Who's Ben Mark I?

Of course I'm sure it's a positive and complimentary comparison ...


By the way I think that Anderson's letter of 1908, in which he mistakes the Liberal Home Sec. William Harcourt, who was H.S. prior to 1888, as the one he was muscling up to about the Ripper murders and responding to the political pressure he was placed under, is also a memory conflation of the events of 1895 -- involving Grant and Lawende's possible affirmation to that Ripper suspect -- for Harcourt was Chancellor of the Exchequer in that later Lib. govt.

I would also argue that Anderson, a Tory, in falsely blaming the Liberals for acting inappropriately towards him as a police chief, is showing how his acute political bias, as an arch-conservative, infects his memory -- not deceitfully but certainly in a partisan way.

It is often argued that Anderson's memory could not have substituted Sadler for 'Kosminski', because the former was a poor English Gentile and the latter a poor Polish Jew.

I argue that the Harcourt-Matthews swap is evidence that he was capable of such an error.

I also disagree, conceptually, that it was 'confusion' and not a mental substitution; that Sadler, Coles, and 1891, Grant, 1895 -- all cease to exist in his fading, inevitably self-serving memory.

For consider that he gets wrong a Liberal Home Sec. who had not been in that position -- whose party had not even been in govt. -- for three years before Anderson had his police appointment. Harcourt and Henry Matthews do not look alike, do not have similar names, are from opposite wings of the [mainstream] political spectrum and had very different careers (the Liberal became Treasurer and Opposition leader, and was thus a more significant leader)

But Harcourt had been a Home. Sec. and he was there in govt. (in 1895) when a Jewish witness may have said 'yes' when 'confronted' with a prime Ripper suspect (a Seaman, at that) and yet the case went nowhere.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

I couldn't possibly. I'm British, you know. Far be it from me to suggest that an Eton boy may have been a Barclays Banker.

Regards,

Simon

PS. By the way, Ben Mark I is Ben.

[Cogidubnus]

Merchant...

Hi Jonathan

Not as memorable...and you spoiled it with the "well" !



Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Dave


Well ... you know me, always on the wrong bloody end of the hotdog?

Is there any comments/debate on the theory that the Mac memoir contains no errors about [the un-named] Druitt?That is not to say, of course, that they are not ambiguous, opaque, and incomplete.

That Mac has aligned himself, essentially, with the timing of the Vicar and not the MP (or Sims)?

[Cogidubnus]

Now which particular Mac Memoir are we talking about here? Aberconway strikes me as particularly furtive...

Dave

[Jonathan H]

The 3rd Version

I am referring to the de-facto third version of his Report, 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' (1914) as it was arguably definitive for two reasons:

1. Instead of hiding behind the bureaucracy or cronies, he published his opinion under his own name (expanding on his 1913 comments, at his retirement).

2. Much of what is written in that chapter (though not all) matches the primary sources between 1888 and 1891, like no other police source.

That chapter is an adaptation of 'Aberconway' despite his claims to be writing it from memory -- because he had 'destroyed' everything, right? -- and is instructive for what he leave in, what he leaves out, and what he changes from 'Aberconway' and from the extra Druitt material he provided to Sims in the 1900's.

[Jonathan H]

Compromise date?

I am arguing for a Macnaghten who is pulled in different directions at once, because he had secret knowledge of the Ripper's identity and tried to keep everybody happy.

This worked very well, at least until the birth of modern 'Ripperology'.

For example, if you want to be somewhat candid in your memoirs -- especially if you are settling an old score with Anderson -- then you would have to admit that the un-named Druitt did not take his own life the same evening or same morning as he murdered Kelly.

But if you pull back the timing too far you will alert Sims that you have been deceiving a pal.

You might also choose a suicide date which tips off the respectable circles in which the Druitts move, especially in Dorset, who will recall the tragic barrister who also took his life in the Thames for reasons which remain totally inexplicable.

So Mac picked Nov 10th, which showed cognition that the story as picked up by Farquharason and repeated melodraamtically by Sims was wrong.

On the other hand, Mac could claim to Sims -- if he complained about the gap still being too long to be a 'shrieking, raving fiend' -- that he meant the 9th, but had made an error, and quite a significant proofing error at that.

Actually Macnaghten had debuted this compromise date at his 1913 press conference too.

[caz]

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.

Hi Jonathan,

I can't remember saying you had never been attacked. You were going on about it here, and I didn't really want to be dragged into something that had happened to you elsewhere and concerned other posters.

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.

But only astonishing if all your speculation is correct and Druitt really did have a secret more terrible than just being mentally ill like his mother. In short it's a circular argument gone pear-shaped. The lid would have been 'mostly kept on' if the 'evidence' against Druitt was mostly made up of rumour and gossip and therefore potentially libellous as far as his surviving family members were concerned!

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).

What do you make of the cheques found on his body then? There has been reasonable speculation that they represented a final salary and pay-off by the school, which couldn't be the case if he was sacked in his absence for going AWOL.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jonathan H]

To Caz

You've got it round the wrong way.

Macnaghten makes a circular argument in the official version of his Report (though not the unofficial version)

I am not making such an argument because suspicion, or belief, in Druitt as 'Jack' begins, we now know, not with the police chief but with his own people in Dorset.

Actually we already knew that from Mac in 1894, and 1914,, but the 2008 identification of the MP confirmed that historical chain.

It was the missing link source between the sympathetic accounts of Druitt's death in 1889 and his extraordinary re-emergence as a Ripper suspect in 1894, and then this solution projected to the public -- though carefully veiled -- from 1898.

Mac 'believed' despite Druitt being a fellow gent/Anglican/Tory, a suspect who could never receive due process, who was an embarrassment for the Yard,and and who killed himself at the wrong time to be the fiend, by about two years!

[lynn cates]

question

Hello Jonathan.

"Belief, in Druitt as 'Jack' begins, we now know, not with the police chief but with his own people in Dorset."

Do we know this apart from Farqy's story?

Cheers.
LC

[Jonathan H]

We have three sources by Macnaghten, actually the same one redrafted: the official version of his Report, the unofficial one, and his 1914 memoir.

They all point to the family as the origin of the notion of Druitt as Jack.

The old paradigm claimed Mac's 'errors' (in only two versions of the document) proved he never met with the Druitt family, or even had access to accurate biog. info. about Druitt of even the most basic kind.

New paradigm argues that the identification of the MP renders this untenable.

Farquharson knew the Druitt clan as near-neigbours, fellow members of the bourgeoisie, and fellow Tories, and he knew Macnaghten as an Old Etonian and Tory, and fellow member of the ruling elite.

Mac pointed to the family and the MP source(s) point in the same direction due to geographical proximity.

Sims as a Mac source-by-proxy also points in the same direction: eg. the 'frantic friends' is really William Druitt trying to find Montie, striking textual evidence that Macnaghten was familiar, at the very least, with the 1889 accounts of the inquest.

Other bits by Sims claim consultation between the pals and the police, arguably a veiling of the truth: the brother and the police chief conferred in 1891.

Historically speaking, that's enough.

That can be quite a shock to people who bring a police-mentality to this case because the bar is so much lower than what would make it into a court of law. The trade-off is that an historical opinion is always contingent; a provisional theory, lehal ones tend to remain permanent, or resist revision.

The justification that this is a theory -- and not mere fanciful speculation -- is that Mac claimed in public under his own name, in 1913 and 1914, that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper. That it w as a secret he would never divulge.

Can limited and contradictory sources be shown to back up his claim? I argue yes, overwhlemingly so.

Can a critical primary source be shown to be reliable?

[lynn cates]

thanks

Hello Jonathan. Thanks.

Cheers.
LC