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

[Simon Wood]

Hi Robert,

I take your point, but as top cops were [and still are] often joined by social, political and business affiliations outside their membership of the force I don't quite buy Stewart's strict dividing line. As an instance, in later years there remained quite harmonious working relationships between retirees [Abberline] and serving officers [Froest].

I'll bet the pot was always warm for Cutbush.

Regards,

Simon

[mklhawley]

Hi Robert,

I take your point, but as top cops were [and still are] often joined by social, political and business affiliations outside their membership of the force I don't quite buy Stewart's strict dividing line. As an instance, in later years there remained quite harmonious working relationships between retirees [Abberline] and serving officers [Froest].

I'll bet the pot was always warm for Cutbush.

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon,

And don't forget Littlechild was in the Abberline-Froest mix in 1898.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Jonathan H]

To Caz and Chris

Just about eveything you have written is wrong.

1. Sources which go against their clas, race, credal and familial biases -- let alone all four at once -- are complelling historical evidence, tough a conclusion can only be provisional until another source turns up which either confirms, or detracts from such a judgement.

2. Druitt's death was not at a convenient time. Mary Kelly was not fixed as the 'final' murder until Macnaghten found Druitt. You are poutting the cart before the horse.

3. There is nothing whatsoever in the sources to suggest that druitt was a 'pervert'. Rather his family believed he was the Ripper because he was a sexual manaic: he gained sexual pleasure from violence against women, specifically harlots.

4. There is nothing to suggest that Mac received information about Druitt after he wrote the memo, which later firmed up his opinion.

The 'Aberconway' version, the one he actually showed people and projected onto the public, shows that he thought Druitt was porbably the fiend. The official version reveals that the family 'believed' and that such a notion originated with them. Macnaghten's 1898 confirmation to Griffiths in 1898, and 1899 to 1917 with Sims, his 1913 comments and 1914 memoirs confirm that he agreed with the family and the MP on the issue of 'certainty'. Furthermore said memoirs and extra details he gave Sims shows that he, arguably, had a better handle on the facts about Druitt than Farquharson.


Therefore, this modern portrait of Macnaghten as a casual figure who would easily leap towards Druitt because of some shady inferences does not match the person who wrote 'Days of My Years', or the contemporaneous sources about his policing abilities.

[Cogidubnus]

There is nothing whatsoever in the sources to suggest that druitt was a 'pervert'. Rather his family believed he was the Ripper because he was a sexual manaic: he gained sexual pleasure from violence against women, specifically harlots.

I'm sorry Jonathan, when all is said and done, there's little either way evidentially...on the one hand Druitt had just been sacked from Valentines, on the other we only have MMs dubious word...and hints from a rather nasty minded homophobe...

Whilst you build quite a convincing case for suspect status, (which I respect and indeed admire!) it does remain just that...on which basis I don't see how you can dismiss Caz and Chris (and indirectly me I suppose) as completely wrong...

Druitt's death was not at a convenient time. Mary Kelly was not fixed as the 'final' murder until Macnaghten found Druitt. You are poutting the cart before the horse.

It could equally be argued that MacNaghten settled upon Mary Kelly as the last of the canonicals, simply because her death fitted in with the handily available Druitt's suicide...more misdirection from the master of the same...if as you argue, he's that devious...(which I don't deny incidentally).

Sources which go against their clas, race, credal and familial biases -- let alone all four at once -- are complelling historical evidence, tough a conclusion can only be provisional until another source turns up which either confirms, or detracts from such a judgement

Come again? So let's argue this the other way round...West Country MP who has a known bias against homosexuals is convinced an otherwise blameless schoolmaster (recently mysteriously sacked) is JtR? What are we to conclude are his thought processes?

I too believe the Aberconway version is the later...though I'm not sure this means much...Frankly I'm becoming more and more of the somewhat heretical view that Anderson, MacNaghten, Swansen, Dew and Abberline were all bullshitters and not one of them had a clue who JtR was...if, that is, JtR was a single killer at all...after all we only have MMs views on that too!

I think I'm heading even further out of acceptable bounds than you Jonathan!

All the best mate

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Dave

Yes, I think you make some good points, espeically about the inherent unreliability of a dissembling/propagandist source.

For example, Anderson, according to a number of sources, was not anti-Semitic -- quite the opposite. Thus for him to accuse a Jew, and also that his community was somehow shielding him, and a Jewish witness refused to testify arguably goes against the expected bias, too.

[Jonathan H]

Farquharson was right again -- the swine!

On the other site, the Farquharason sources regarding his libel suit of 1893, which the Tory lost against his 1992 Liberal opponent are not only interesting but also instructive.

They arguably support the revisionist -- or throwback -- theory that Macanghten knew exactly who Druitts was, and no doubt knew well Farquharson's strengths and limitations as a source about this infamous crime.

Read them for yourselves, but I would just make the following observations:

The MP was a nasty piece of work, who stooped to what happened in his opponent's childhood at a public boys' school, a distressing bit of sexual harassment, and had it spread that the victim had been purged for 'abominable practices'.

But Farqy was also right, in the sense that the poor man as a boy had been some older's boy's catamite, and had cracked and wanted it to stop -- and been asked to leave for his own safety. Whereas the Liberal had tried to claim that nothing happened untoward at all, and this was exposed in the civil trial as not quite what happened either.

In other words, the MP was essentially correct in the private, painful and irrelevant info. he had picked up along the local, Tory grapevine -- and he still lost the libel case.

No wonder the newspapers were so nervous about the libellous implications of publishing that the Ripper was a suicided, surgeon's son in 1891.

It speaks badly of Farqy as a contemptible bounder, and yet well of him as a source for inside intelligence about some private pain in a gent's life.

Knowing this, consider that we have here a ruthless, partisan politician who would stoop to that kind of smear campaign to discredit a Liberal opponent.

Yet ... when Farqy discovered that Jack the Ripper was the deceased member of a local Tory family he took all leave of his brutal, partisan, political senses! That's how overwhelmed he was by the 'evidence' against Druitt.

He began excitedly blabbing to people his 'doctrine', and it, inevitably, leaked to the press. Right after the Coles' murder he even allowed himself to be questioned and remained 'adamant' -- the real Jack was dead!

A year later a Tory newspaper, the 'Western Mail', named Farquharson and claimed that the police had thoroughly debunked ('exploded') the MP's tale.

And what was the evidence for this according to the same article?

Nothing to do with the MP getting the story wrong about the un-named Druitt, but rather that this deceased suspect was cleared by subsequent events. eg. the Coles murder two days later, and that the constabulary were now apparently watching 'night and day' not just any suspect, but the real Jack -- whom they never charged.

Macnaghten would dump both of those expedience-driven notions, along with the [by then] deceased Farquharson, when he relaunched the tale via Griffiths and Sims in 1898/9.

One poster on the other site argues that Farquharson was never talking about Druitt but rather another local madman, one who talked about himself being accused of being the fiend -- and who died years after the story broke?!

Yes, it's that desperate.

Paul Begg, a brilliant writer, argues that it is only an 'inference' that Farquharson was Mac's source 'some years after' Druitt killed himself. That perhaps the two men shared the same source for the allegation about Mad Montie?

Possible, but I disagree.

I counter-argue that since Macnaghten, in 1914, has a better sense of the timing of Druitt's death in relation to Kelly, eg. 'soon after ...' and a loose twenty-four hours later -- perhaps longer -- but not the same evening, then the MP's tale is second or even third-hand.

Whereas Macnaghten has either conferred with the Druitt brother, or has at least checked the newspaper accounts of 1889

(A side note: I believe that Mac also later told Sims that he was Druitt's double and, remarkably, this is true of the 1879 pamphlet of the younger, thinner Sims -- minus the beard -- the only picture, moreover, which I have seen in which the writer's hair has a dead-centre parting just like Druitt, and not his usual off-centre. eg. Mac had seen a picture of Druitt presumably from the family)

Macnaghten was demonstrably aware of Farquharson's 'doctrine' about the murder-self-murder on the same evening because he exploited the error in his Report(s) and with credulous cronies, but in retirement he tiptoed away from the allegedly incriminating conjunction in the one document under his own name for posterity.

[caz]

To Caz and Chris

Just about eveything you have written is wrong.

Cheers. And you wonder why some posters end up being uncivil to you?

1. Sources which go against their clas, race, credal and familial biases -- let alone all four at once -- are complelling historical evidence, tough a conclusion can only be provisional until another source turns up which either confirms, or detracts from such a judgement.

But what about sources which go totally with their sexual prejudices? If Farqy described a bit of schoolboy buggery (far more common then and now than anyone likes to imagine) as 'abominable practices', is that not sound historical evidence that the 'sexual insanity' attributed to Druitt (and forming - or adding to - the suspicions against him) would have been enough to cancel out all these other biases you are presuming he would have had?

2. Druitt's death was not at a convenient time. Mary Kelly was not fixed as the 'final' murder until Macnaghten found Druitt. You are poutting the cart before the horse

.

But wasn't it Mac who personally believed the awful, sexually insane 'glut' would have caused the killer's brain to give way? Or was he lying through his teeth? I suspect that Druitt fit this bill all too neatly because of his alleged sexual insanity and the fact that his brain did give way shortly after the 'glut'. Confirmation bias: MJK had to be the last one or the whole theory came off the rails.

3. There is nothing whatsoever in the sources to suggest that druitt was a 'pervert'. Rather his family believed he was the Ripper because he was a sexual manaic: he gained sexual pleasure from violence against women, specifically harlots.

LOL. I'd call what the ripper did 'perverted' in the extreme - at least compared with compulsive masturbation (is there any other kind?) or homosexuality. But each to his own I guess. I've still seen no sound historical evidence that Druitt's family believed he was the kind of pervert who liked to rummage about in dead harlots's innards, and then managed to get their beliefs leaked to the likes of Farqy. What-a-mistaka-ta-maka!

4. There is nothing to suggest that Mac received information about Druitt after he wrote the memo, which later firmed up his opinion.

Well he did say there was 'no shadow of proof' against Druitt or anyone else, and implied that his personal suspicions had simply become stronger over time, the more he thought about the case (which certainly doesn't suggest any light-bulb moment from learning some specific and deeply incriminating piece of information), all of which surely negated any need to name him, beyond an understandable desire to get his theory down on record.

But no doubt you will tell me why all of this is wrong again.

Love,

Caz
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[Jonathan H]

Umbrella Men

To Caz

Oh, I know why people are uncivil, and it has nothing to do with me being blunt, or even-handed, or polite, or rude.

None of those things count, and never did.

I went through a similar experience with JFK-Conspiracy Buffs years ago, because I proposed Oswald as acting alone.

Not that everybody here is as ghastly as them -- nothing like it -- but some sure are.

When you challenge an old paradigm you can have a vigorous, intellectual debate with people who don't really mind either way. They just want the best theory, based on limited and contradictory data.

But when you 'blaspheme' against 'orthodoxy', then the first resort is usually abuse.

And I wasn't being uncivil, just blunt because you say the same things over and over, and it's not a real debate. It's just attrition.

For you are making errors. How am I supposed to sugar the bitter pill?

1. There is nothing to suggest Druitt was a homosexual or was sacked for such 'serious trouble'. 'Sexual maniac' means a person who experiences erotic pleasure from sadism, as Mac defines it, not being gay.

2. Mac admitted in his memoirs that Druitt came to his attention not because of the timing of his suicide, but rather because of information received 'some years after'. He was thus not told about a suspicious sucide but about a deceased gentleman whose people believed was Jack the Ripper. He investigated and agreed -- rightly or wrongly -- and 'laid' to rest this 'ghost' which had haunted them all.

3. The official version of his Report was sent nowhere. It had no internal or external impact, whereas the 'Aberconway' version was Mac's opinion -- that Druitt was the likely Ripper -- projected onto the public in a deliberate propaganda offensive. His 1913 comments and 1914 memoirs confirms that he agreed with the family's and the MP's certainty.

4. Since there was nothing about Druitt's profile to believe he was the fiend, the evidence must have overwhelmed Mac's bias for it not to be a fellow Anglican, Gentile and Tory, let alone the family's bias not to want anything to do with the Whitechapel horrors.

Could they have all been mistaken? Of course.


By the way just -- how did you put it -- just to butt in, but you never answered my question on the other thread about the 'Diary".

To what theory do you subscribe to, if any, as to who wrote it and when?

[ChrisGeorge]

To Caz and Chris

Just about eveything you have written is wrong.

Oh?

1. Sources which go against their clas, race, credal and familial biases -- let alone all four at once -- are complelling historical evidence, tough a conclusion can only be provisional until another source turns up which either confirms, or detracts from such a judgement.

Sorry. No. It's your belief or rather bias that this strengthens your argument. But it's not "compelling historical evidence." Rather it's your theory and nothing more.

You say that because Druitt was a gentleman, a public schoolboy, and a gentleman, he must have been the Ripper for Macnaghten to favor him. But that doesn't necessarily follow if for some reason Macnaghten had convinced himself that Druitt did the murders and that the murders ended with his death, which is what he states.

2. Druitt's death was not at a convenient time. Mary Kelly was not fixed as the 'final' murder until Macnaghten found Druitt. You are poutting the cart before the horse.

But Druitt's death did occur at a convenient time for anyone who believes that the last Whitechapel murder was the Kelly murder. However, his suicide did not occur as Macnaghten states on the night of the last murder, as Macnaghten implies in the famous Memorandum, and nor as the West of England MP (Farquharson) is reported to have believed.

3. There is nothing whatsoever in the sources to suggest that druitt was a 'pervert'. Rather his family believed he was the Ripper because he was a sexual manaic: he gained sexual pleasure from violence against women, specifically harlots.

Sorry, Jonathan. What's the proof that Druitt's family "believed he was the Ripper because he was a sexual maniac: he gained sexual pleasure from violence against women, specifically harlots"? That's strictly your assumption.

4. There is nothing to suggest that Mac received information about Druitt after he wrote the memo, which later firmed up his opinion.

Then why does he name two other men in the memorandum as being equally likely suspects? ("I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders.")

The problem with your theory, Jonathan, with due respect, is that it is built on too many assumptions and leaps of faith. As Caz pointed out, Macnaghten states in the memorandum, very tellingly, "no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one." If he really had the goods about Druitt why would he state that? Doesn't it seem more likely that as time went on, as I stated in my earlier post, his beliefs about Druitt solidified into certainty, rather than he received the "truth" about the murders either from Farquharson or directly from the Druitt family?

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan H]

To Chris


1.That sources are compelling when they go against their perceived bias is simply historical methodology. That is not to say that the sources cannot be interpreted as being in line with a bias. It is just that with the Druitts-Farquarson-Macnaghten axis, I have not seen anybody argue it here with any effectiveness.

2. Macnaghten went hurtling down to Swallow Gardens on Feb 13th 1891 because, as with Swanson and Anderson, the Coles murder might be the fiend again? He had no sense of Kelly being the final murder, let alone that the murderer was deceased. Then he found Druitt and realised that the police had been fruitlessly chasing a phantom.

3. As with all Old Paradigmers you narrowly quote the official version of Mac's Report, at the expense of 'Aberconway', and his 1913 comments, and the certainty he communicated to Sims, and his 1914 memoirs.

I do understand why.

If you factor in the other Mac sources your position becomes untenable. The reason the memoirs are more reliable is because they concede embarrassing elements which we can see match other primary sources from 1888 to 1891. Namely that Druitt must be an entirely posthumous suspect from years later.

The Report(s) are full of politically-motivated dissembling and deflections. One of the critical ones is the self-serving impression that Druitt was a suspect at the time of the 1888 murders, and that his suicide corresponded with some preconceived 'awful glut' theory (and to a lesser extent did 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog -- which they don't). His memoirs 'fessed up that this was not so, that it was based on information received 'some years after'..

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.

I like the way you quote Mac from that document as gospel when it suits you -- the lack of proof -- and then dismiss it when you don't like it -- that the family 'believed'.

By the way on the other site you are arguably in error again.

Farquharson may have believed that Druitt killed himself on the same night as the final murder but Macnaghten, in the one document for public consumption under his own name, did not.

Therefore, whereas the MP's tale was not first-hand Mac's arguably was, and we arguably see a veiled version of his meeting with William druitt in Sims (1903, 1907). Twenty-four years later, Mac knew that Druitt killed himself 'soon after' Kelly not immediately after -- and that is correct.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Jonathan

To be clear about it, I am not bonded to any theory, old school or anything. I'm simply a skeptic.

I would like to know the truth about the Whitechapel murders, just as you would, and everyone who has ever studied the murders. I am prepared to believe clear evidence when it is shown to me but I am doubtful of theories that depend on too many leaps of faith, as it seems to me your theory does.

I am not sure that either Macnaghten or Anderson knew the truth about the murders. Although in their respective memoirs both men sound persuasive in a rather bombastic way, plumping for two entirely different candidates, there is too much that does not add up.

As I have expressed before, my inclination is to think that both Anderson and Macnaghten wanted to portray Scotland Yard in a better light, and that the Yard or, perhaps more precisely, they were not completely in the dark about who the killer was. And perhaps that is the key thing, to write about an answer to the murders in their own memoirs. It made themselves look better, and sold books just like the journalists in 1888 who sold newspapers by writing about the crimes and (often) sensationalizing them at the same time. It would appear to me that might override the thought of Macnaghten "outing" a fellow gentleman for being the Ripper if he had convinced himself Druitt was the bloody fiend of Whitechapel, as he evidently had.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

I think that is a reasonable opinion, for sure. I would just say that 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' concedes error by the yard, and implicitly debunks Anderson and his Ripper claims.

Primary sources often disagree but that does not mean they automatically cancel each other out; that one cannot be more reliable than another.

On the other hand, your sceptical opinion can be backed by also arguing that if Macnaghten misleads, then all bets are off -- not without verification from other sources and there are, arguably, nothing but scraps and ambiguous glimpses.

I think that the North Country Vicar is about Druitt, though it may not be.

But if it is, a counter-argument to Druitt's actual culpability can be mounted.

For example, real serial killers do not suffer from 'epileptic mania' as it does not exist, and they tend not to confess to priests due to tormented feelings of self-loathing.

The story fits all too neatly into Victorian-Anglican notions of repentance and redemption.

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.

And this might have been nutted out if Druitt had lived and been properly interrogated.

[Scott Nelson]

Even though Newland Smith died 10 years after the Miller's Court Murder, will you at least consider the possibility that he was Farquharson's suspect? Or maybe John Saunders? Think premature death anouncements --asylum confinement. Misinformation...you know, the easy stuff that makes historical renditions easy.

[Jonathan H]

Of course, Scott, you might be right.

Other unknown sources may eventually show that it is even likely that you are right.

But with what little we have a much likelier theory is that you are wrong.

This is is because your theory rests on a very slender reed; that Farquharson, a ruthless political operator, knew less about the people in his immediate area than we do at this distance and with just scraps!

Why on earth would Sir Melville Macnaghten, the 'action man' and Ripper tragic not check out the tale of his fellow Tory and Old Etonian?

He did and it was about 'M. J. Druitt', the Protean, sexual maniac. He could do this from the newspapers and we see indications that he ad information from them at the very least (the mother was in a madhouse, the brother trying to find him, the 'friend' who tipped him off).

But why would Mac not meet, discreetly, with William Druitt about his family tragedy, with nobody in sight to arrest let alone bring to trial?

Of course, publicity-wise the Druitt revelation was a disaster unless ... the story was altered, and sure enough, when it was rebooted by Mac, anonymously via cronies seven years later, it had morphed beyond recognition -- 'everyone was satisfied'.

Semi-fictionalising the story in Sims protected the Druitt family. That's a fact.

But was that just a happy accident for them due to Mac's supposedly hopeless memory?

Or was it by design, in order to protect their 'good' name in the respectable circles in which they moved, and protect the public rep. of the Yard from the embarrassing truth: that they had not really been chasing the 'mad doctor' in 1888?

No wonder Abberline, Reid and Littlechild are scratching their heads, two of them searching for medico suspects from 1888 that this tale might match?

So, was this by fortuitous accident or by sly design, Scott?

Will you not at least consider the question?

[caz]

And I wasn't being uncivil, just blunt because you say the same things over and over...

Too funny, Jonathan.

I didn't say you were being uncivil. I said that when you bluntly accuse others of being 'wrong' (when it could just as easily be you who is wrong, since this is all a matter of opinion based on too few facts) you shouldn't be surprised if some of the responses are less than civil. I don't believe that includes me or Chris, but I have seen you accuse others of being uncivil. And you always presume it's because you have somehow upset the apple cart, when in reality people are simply questioning your personal interpretation of Mac's various ripper musings, as we are all entitled to do.

1. There is nothing to suggest Druitt was a homosexual or was sacked for such 'serious trouble'. 'Sexual maniac' means a person who experiences erotic pleasure from sadism, as Mac defines it, not being gay

.

Look, I don't know what nature Druitt's alleged 'sexual insanity' took. I am not the one who made such allegations, and whoever did was not remotely clear about what they knew and how they knew it. There is reason to believe, however (from the example of Tumblety for a start), that Victorian cages were all too easily rattled by any sexual activity beyond what was required to procreate, and like mountains made out of molehills, rippers could be made out of masturbators, homosexuals and syphilitics. I fail to see what possible 'evidence' Druitt's family, friends or enemies could have found that he was a 'sexual maniac' who got off on being violent towards 'harlots'. Did they catch him in the act of being violent towards one? If not, what exactly did they catch him doing or saying, that could have convinced them he was the Whitechapel fiend?

4. Since there was nothing about Druitt's profile to believe he was the fiend, the evidence must have overwhelmed Mac's bias for it not to be a fellow Anglican, Gentile and Tory, let alone the family's bias not to want anything to do with the Whitechapel horrors.

Once again, how do you know that Mac's personal biases did not include the kind of sexual pervert that he had been led by a trusted source to believe Druitt was? How do you know that this trusted source (Farqy or A.N.Other) was not similarly biased, and had not merely presumed that Druitt's family must have known something? The classic circular argument could have been at work here: 'little doubt' that if Druitt had been indulging his violent sexual urges with those Whitechapel harlots, his educated family would have guessed the truth.

By the way just -- how did you put it -- just to butt in, but you never answered my question on the other thread about the 'Diary".

To what theory do you subscribe to, if any, as to who wrote it and when?

Sorry, I thought I had answered you, but you may have missed it, as you missed my answer regarding the Scotland Yard investigation of 1993.

I have no current theory, although I would rule out all the 'modern' suspects, and I believe the scientists who concluded that it was penned prior to 1970 - going against their post-1987 biases to do so.

Love,

Caz
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