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

[Scott Nelson]

There would be no Druitt suspect. You have to learn to take things at face value.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Robert,

Don't worry. No hapless fool ever stood a chance of being charged with, let alone convicted of, the Whitechapel murders.

That's the beauty of the JtR mystery.

It had to forever remain a matter of doubt and rumour.

Regards,

Simon

[Bridewell]

The problem I have with the Druitt theory is what it asks us to believe of MacNaghten:

That a fairly recently appointed, very senior police officer would risk his job, his career prospects, his good name and his self-esteem, just to protect the "good name" of the Druitt family. We are asked to believe that Sir MM had identified the killer, yet was prepared to enter into a conspiracy with members of the Druitt family, in order to cover it up.

MJD was dead. He couldn't be libelled. If the evidence was there to show that the killer's identity was known, and that he was dead, why not name him? The shame was personal, not familial. The Druitts could have said that it was true, but that they only realised after the suicide. That would be entirely honourable, surely?

I concede the possibility, but it asks us to believe that MacNaghten was a thoroughly dishonourable man who was prepared to enter into a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The only justification for an honourable man acting in the way that MacNaghten did, would be if there was nothing more than suspicion that MJD was JtR.

Did he really go to great lengths to investigate Druitt, discover evidence linking him to the murders - and then do nothing about it? What would be the point? If he had no intention of dealing with what he found under the proverbial stone, why would he bother to look under it in the first place?

Regards, Bridewell.

[PaulB]

Sorry, Jonathan, but I am obviously missing some key argument because I don't see how Montague Druitt or anything associated with him was a 'political imperative'.

[Suzi]

Sorry, Jonathan, but I am obviously missing some key argument because I don't see how Montague Druitt or anything associated with him was a 'political imperative'.

Exactly Paul!!... ....we may of course be mi ssing the Druitt/Van Gogh /Gaughin connections here!!! (Aaaaaaagh!)

[Phil Carter]

I cannot help thinking that, if Macnaghten had definite evidence implicating Druitt, he would have been very irresponsible if he didn't leave such info in a safe place in the event of his early death. In 1894 there was still an unlikely but possible chance that some other man, a complete innocent, could have been convicted of the crimes. Not Cutbush, who was safe within the confines of Broadmoor, but some other chap might have been suspected and charged. Suppose Macnaghten walked under a cab in 1894. What would have happened?

Hello Robert,

Yes- it would have been perfect had the original been left at home, only to have been sent in on the quiet after his death, by one of his decendants at a convenient time, for example.

Best wishes

Phil

PS Lady Aberconway gave Dan Farson a ' her father's private notes which she had copied out soon after his death'....Ive always wondered what she copied them FROM- as there is no factual record of ANOTHER set of notes from THAT time, and seeing that the Aberconway version is SO different from the original in the specific and important areas.

[Stephen Thomas]

Sorry, Jonathan, but I am obviously missing some key argument because I don't see how Montague Druitt or anything associated with him was a 'political imperative'.

Yes, Paul. Let's see him try to get out of that one.

[Jonathan H]

Alone Again, Naturally

To Robert

I think that is a good notion, and the official version sitting in the archive, unknown and undisturbed, could function as the insurance against a wrongful conviction.

The following year, 1895, William Grant was being investigated as possibly 'Jack' and then suddenly -- if Lawende really did affirm to him -- it all just dissolves, and Anderson and perhaps Swanson now have their own deceased chief suspect.

To Bridewell

Yes, it means Macnaghten was somebody who was prepared to lie to the government, mislead his boss and peers ('Kosminski' anyone? Tumblety probably took his own life?), mislead his literary cronies and through them mislead the public (Dr. Jekyll anyone?) and risk getting the sack, and so on.

To which I reply: this is where the sources left by Macnaghten, about him, and by his proxies, lead me.

This is the real story of 'Jack the Ripper': his identity was known, but it was left to a discreet, hand-son, charming senior police administrator to try and keep 'everyone satisfied'.

I totally disagree with you about the libel issue.

Of course Druitt could not be slandered being deceased, but the original 'Bristol Times and Mirror' article of Feb 11th 1891 specifically states that the libel laws are still a menacing factor.

Here is the line:

'I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it.'

Therefore, the libel laws must apply to living people, eg. Druitt's family. For the insinuation that they knew and did nothing, or had not yet contacted the authorities, and so on.

Sir Robert Anderson, who also apparently believed that his chief suspect was deceased (he wasn't) also alludes to the libel laws in his memoirs (March 1910 Magazine version):

'Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I should almost be tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to, provided that the publishers would accept all responsibility in view of a possible libel action.'

Both the newspaper article and Anderson are talking about the same generic concept; that the allegedly unhelpful 'people' connected to the [dead] murderer could sue (and obviously so could the reporter, if alive, or at least the newspaper/Central News Office).

I even more strenuously disagree with you that the Druitts could have coped with the public knowledge that their deceased member was England's most notorious criminal maniac!

That's so naive!

They'd have been inevitably shunned in their bourgeoisie circles as if they were Typhus carriers, and they knew it.

I am arguing that Macnaghten acted honourably not dishonourably. Your view is anathema to me on that score.

He protected the family (and the Tory Party), he cheekily yet self-effacingly had the entire Yard take public credit for the identification, and he made the 'better classes' face up to the essential, unwanted truth: the fiend was one of us, not one of them.

There could never be an arrest or trial. In terms of the law, and due process, Druitt could never be definitively characterised as the Ripper (though that is not what Mac misled Sims to believe for propaganda purposes).

Yes he prepared a document which would name Druitt to the Liberals -- as a minor, hearsay suspect -- but it was never sent to the Home Office.

To reiterate again to some other poster, Druitt does not begin with Macnaghten in the extant record; rather he originates from Dorset prior to that police chief's 'drowned doctor' assertions.

To PaulB

By a 'political imperative', I meant the office politics of having Druitt on file but not as a major suspect.

To protect the Yard from the public lashing at not having investigated Druitt, if the whole story came out.

To the public, in 1898, Mac began to propagate the notion that the 'doctor' was the prime suspect, just as Farquharson (and the people he told) and the family believed him to be. But the story was slyly veiled so that nobody would sue, and the tabloid vultures would not find him (that generation did not even bother to look).

The Druitt story could resurface in Dorset, as it had in 1891, and thus Macnaghten had to be ready for that eventuality.

Before the Vicar tried to publish his account in 1899, Mac had him bookended by Griffiths and Sims and thus debunked and dismissed.

Yet later Sims' profile took on an a critical aspect of the Vicar's tale ('at one time a surgeon') and so did Mac's, once retired ('killed himself 'soon after', not immediately after Millers Ct.)

I also meant that it was a political imperative in that the Whitechapel murders were the debacle of the previous Tory government, and that Scotland Yard was seen by Liberal Radicals as the law enforcement arm of the Conservative Party (both Mac and Anderson were Tories).

Inconveniently, Jack the Ripper turned out to be from a Tory family, discovered by a Tory MP and was [privately] known to a Tory police chief.

It was thus 'imperative' in 1894 that Macnaghten have a document ready for the Liberal Home Sec. Asquith, a pliable, indiscreet, upper class wannabe, that showed that the Force had been cognizant of Druitt -- in 1888? -- but they could not arrest him due to a complete lack of evidence.

To be blunt it's a lie. Druitt was not arrested because he had been dead for over two years, as Mac conceded in his memoirs.

This false, self-serving notion of Druitt as a suspect contemporaneous to the 1888/9 investigation completely fooled Griffiths and Sims -- and they were professional writers on crime! What chance did Asquith have?

Having Druitt on file would have quashed the raging Radicals from saying -- if the whole story came out of Dorset -- that 'Jack the Tory' had been protected, perhaps even ... tipped off as the net closed?? The hay such unscrupulous, anti-Tories could have had with this was an understandable concern to Mac.

It was the perfect intersection of altruistic motives and bureaucratic-partisan motives of survival.

And Macnaghten, the 'honourable schoolboy' was the perfect, politically deft yet temperamentally adolescent player of the big game to be at the centre of it, playing world against world.

I also think Macnaghten anticipated just this sort of suspicion from the Liberals, and so he experimented with a daring, ju jitsu move: to falsely claim that Cutbush and Cutbush were related; to appear to be ultra-candid and to silkily imply that the whole matter could be headed for the libel courts, a destination the government would hardly want to share.

The alternative, that the Cutbushes being related was a mistake of memory is possible, but so unlikely. The police chief who could instantly recall the details of the 700 men below him? He even calls the retired Cutbush 'well-known' in one version.

Well, not to Mac apparently.

But remember, it was composed but not sent.

To Stephen Thomas

Stop salivating so blatantly, it's not a dignified look.

[Roy Corduroy]

Jonathan I like how you have put together things. The totality of it.

Of course, Melville Macnaghten composed his Report and private papers (Aberconway) pretty quickly. Just a matter of days after the Sun articles in February 1894. As you suggest, there could be some degree of manipulation, or camouflage, and there could be outright mistakes as well. Sorting them is like a spin at roulette. But you propose how it could have happened.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

Thanks

Thanks Roy

For at least making my lonely perch a little less alienating.

I think you make a pertinent observation; that the sources can be interpreted in different ways and arguably without loose ends - the veracity of which is in the eye of the beholder.

I argue that those who think my 'case disguised' theory is implausible to just consider the alternative; the old, pre-Farquharson-identified paradigm of a fumbling, forgetful Mac, who was so disinterested in his own Ripper suspect that he never, ever found out if he was even a doctor or not.

That's arguably nothing like the real Macnaghten either.

[PaulB]

Jonathan,
This is where I am having trouble: why would the Met have been criticised if the whole story had come out?

There was nothing about Druitt's suicide to connect it to the murders except it's timing. It could be argued that the police should have noted this and investigated, and they could have been criicised for not having done so. But would that have been much more than a storm in a teacup? On the other hand, Abberline, if we choose to believe him, says that Druitt was investigated at the time of his suicide and that nothing was found to incriminate him. So, storm in a teacup, or no storm at all. What was the problem?

So what problem do the police have if information unavailable to them in 1888 had emerged later and pointed to Druitt's guilt? None that I can see. It happens all the time. And if Farquharson or the vicar start telling their stories, which Farquaharson was cheerily doing anyway, so what?

Okay, so it wouldn't have been very nice for the Druitt family, but would Macnaghten have particularly cared about that? I doubt it. They were a well-to-do county family with a local standing, but were they people for whom Macnaghten would have sacrificed himself for? Personally, I doubt it. I accept that the ranks close, but to lie to all and sundry, including one's superiors? No.

Furthermore, he didn't. He wrote of Druitt in his memorandum. He didn't have to. Or, if he felt he did, he could have referred to Druitt simply as a suicide, not specifically someone who drowned himself, and he needn't have mentioned a profession at all. And he certainly didn't need to feed his cronies information which could have led them - or proper journalists rather than gentlemen writers - to identify Druitt.

And above all, he didn't have to lie to his police superiors and political masters. I don't understand why you think they wouldn't have shared Macnaghten's concerns. Weren't they able amd in a far better position to do what you think Macnaghten did? Wasn't it their responsibility to do it. not Macnaghten's?

The theory hangs together well enough, Jonathan, but I have huge problems with the foundations upon which the structure is built. I just can't see Druitt being that important.

Also, I don't think the Ripper was that important. The press tried to make hay from it from time to time, just as they still do, but Anderson's revelations passed without much interest, the Sun's Cutbush story died a death, Farquaharson and the vicar got picked up in a couple of provincial newspapers, nobody tried to identify the drownee Sims prattled on about along with his tiresome coffee stall anecdote that he trotted out when copy was short. The Ripper seems important to us, a sort of cultural icon, the subject of books and articles, movies and films, and a shape on the tourist map, but was he back then, at the turn of the century. Not really.

Phil
She copied them from the Donner version. Adam explained that at length. Indeed, trying to track down that version was the subject of considerable research efforts.


Paul

[Jonathan H]

To PaulB

Thank-you for taking the trouble to reply.

We agree to disagree as ever.

Not to rehash, but just to counter-argue the main points.

Why was Druitt so important to Macnaghten?

It's a case for which he was supposedly too late for -- he disputes this in his memoir preface -- and yet he alone devotes an entire chapter to in 1914, naming all the victims?

His 1913 comments upon retirement-- the case was still a public and press obsession -- has him saying: I know who he was, but you're never going to.

I think iDruitt was everything to him because he had made a characteristically thorough investigation in 1891, and thus met with the Druitts. He had assured them that it would not come out, and within reason he would fulfil that promise.

Sims give us the veiled version of this meeting in 1903 and 1907.

That Mac cared about the Druitts and protecting them, and libel-proofing the tale, is shown by 'Aberconway' which is the MP tale resurrected and reshaped -- without Farquharson. And disseminated to the public, still quite a risk really, by his gentleman-writer chums.

We know that 'family' was changed into 'friends' and this was to build a wall around them. A very secure one, as Matters and McCormick could not find Druitt without the name.

Actually I agree in the sense that I think Mac handled it all with diiscretion and aplomb.

When Cutbush reared its head in 1894 he hastily got Druitt onto an official document and then quietly shelved it.

It was the loose-lipped, arrogant Farquharson who had dangerously pulled the case into the Conservative Party, and so Mac dealt with that too. He shut him up, eventually, and in 1892 it was reported in the 'Western Mail', co-woned by a Tory backbencher, that the MP was discredited by both the subsequent Coles murder and that the police were now watching the real murderer 'night and day, awake and asleep', and thus were preventing more murders.

That's all pretty tidy.

Abberline of 1903 is not a source I shy away from. He is instrumental to my theory. He does not know what he is talking about re: Druitt.

That's a big call but I make it based on two critical factors.

He thinks the drowned man was a 'medical student' or a 'young doctor' -- he wasn't. That's from the press (though not the 'young' detail) and, secondly, because he thinks that the Ripper murders were an 'autumn of terror' which ended with Kelly, and that police knew this at the time. Actually, he contradicts himself on this point.

Abberline is perpetutating a self-serving mythos started by Mac.

The murders did not stop with Kelly, they thought they continued re: McKenzie, and Coles, The police had no reason to think 'Jack' had stopped or was deceased. Druitt, a tragic barrister from Blackheath and Dorset was not investigated by the police as a Ripper suspect -- ever. Why would he be? And Mac's much later investigation was private.

From late 1888 to early 1891, the timing of Druitt's suicide ironically cleared him of being the fiend, if he was ever mentioned in that context and I doubt he was.

We see this in the new MP source you discovered. The un-named Farquharson remains adamant, whereas the authorities have no reason to believe that the murderer is dead.

But secretly Mac would come to agree with his fellow Old Etonian, and with the family, and the others who knew, and then it became his mission to, eventually, get the Yard to take credit for his identification while preventing the family from being exposed (by 1895 Farquharson too was deceased).

Mac achieved this paradox brilliantly, via 'substantial truth in fictitious form' -- it just flummoxes researchers today.

[PaulB]

Jonathan,
Somewhere amid all the argument I have lost track of the foundations upon which your grand and wonderful theory is constructed, and it seems to me that it is that Macnaghten (a) wanted to say that he knew who the Ripper was, (b) wanted Scotland Yard to take the credit, and (c) that he wanted to protect Druitt’s family by not naming him and spreading disinformation.

Now, your argument seems to be that he does this by undertaking his own private and successful investigation, withholding information about it from his police superiors and political masters, and by slipping the goods to his gentlemen writer buddies, suitably wrapped in misinformation - but actually giving them the place and date and manner of suicide, sufficient information to enable any self-respecting investigate journalist to identify the suspect. All he did was fib about the occupation in the hope that this lie would be enough to deflect them. Assuming that he made any such attempt – Sims had at least the initial, ‘D’, and for all we know may even have had the name and just been playing coy with Littlechild. Some people might even think that Macnaghten was doing his damndest to get Druitt publicly identified and named, not the reverse!

And there is absolutely no reason that I can see why Macnaghten would have kept anything secret from his bosses. They had no more reason to make Druitt’s name known than anyone else. They also probably had access to the strings of bigger puppets who could act to keep the name and details secret should they have thought it necessary to keep it secret to begin with.

And why did protecting the Druitts matter to MAcnaghten anyway?

You see, on the face of it Macnaghten received information about Druitt, he either investigated or didn’t, but was satisfied that Druitt was guilty. He would have passed this information to his superiors, as he was required to do, and been reasonably confident that they would be as sensitive as he was to whatever reasons there may have been for secrecy, assuming there were any (which I don’t think you have demonstrated that there were). He could have then sat back, satisfied that he’d done his duty.

So why didn't he do that? Why do we have a tell-tale Macnaghten dropping hints to writer buddies? Just a massive ego that wanted to tell people about the secret and led him to give them enough information to identify the man if they’d really wanted to?

[Jonathan H]

Yep, that's pretty much it -- with some key finessing.

Mac also changed the date of when the 'doctor' killed himself for the writers.

Later Sims even changed the date of the body's retrieval.

Griffiths and Sims were not 'self-respecting investigative journalists', that's why Mac picked them, though they were politically at either ends of the spectrum.

A bi-partisan propaganda offensive.

Chatting with Mac, and in Griffiths' case apparently being shown the 'Home Office Report' is the research. Being part of the Inner Circle and being privy to the Big Secret contained in the Definitive Report made them reverse their earlier claims that cops knew nothing substantial.

Of course they knew the name was Druitt (the minor comic writer Frank Richardson, and his 'Dr. Bluitt', knew too) but they were not going to publish it, and they didn't.

I think you under-estimate the personal dimension here.

It would have been profoundly moving to Macnaghten, or anybody for that matter, to meet the Druitts, or a Druitt, and hear the appalling tale and their anguish of it coming out, and of it nearly coming out in 1891, and the fear it would it come out again. Especially if the 'North Country Vicar' is about Druitt and they had to face that time-bomb going off in 1899?

Plus what if Mac did not trust his superiors, peers or politicians to be as discreet -- one already had not been -- and thought that Anderson might blab?

As soon as Anderson fixed upon 'Kosminski' in 1895 he began talking about him to people who published this assertion. Fortunately it was mostly fiction, as in the Polish Jew was not sectioned soon after the final murder and was not on the prowl for 'mere weeks'.

Was that just luck for the Kosminski family, or by design?

Mac was under no obligation to do anything since there was nobody to arrest and the case against Druitt could never be proven legally.

In my opinion you under-estimate not only that 'family' became 'friends', but also that the profile in Sims was so detailed that the circles around this man would recognize him.

Of course much of the material was also fictitious, so they did not recognize him.

I think this 'lucky break' for the Druitts is too coincidental.

It's a discreet set-up from which Macnaghten stepped back in his memoirs; where the gap between murder and self-murder is extended from 'the same evening' to a loose twenty-four hours, if not longer.

Otherwise, totally out of character, Mac nearly dropped the Druitt family right in it in the 1900's.

How lucky that his superb memory failed him with Sims, while being so indiscreet.

Consider that Anderson (and Swanson?) think that 'Kosminski' is deceased, and sectioned soon after the Kelly murder. Yet Anderson's confidential assistant knew that both of those key details were not true.

That's misleading your superior is it not -- to let him keep thinking that his Ripper is dead, when he isn't?

[PaulB]

Jonathan,
Many thanks.The thing is, Jonathan, that the obligation on Macnaghten to keep his superiors informed of any developments, particularly solutions to past crimes, especially serious ones, didn’t end simply because the suspect was dead. And I really do appreciate the human dimension, but there is no evidence that he distrusted his superiors, who were, after all, very well able to handle extremely sensitive information. Anyway, Macnaghten was quick enough to tick Druitt's name in his report and to tell Griffiths and Sims what it was, and maybe even comic turns you say. As for underestimating the ‘family’ becoming ‘friends’ argument, I don't underestimate it at all. The wrong information Sims gives is very odd, although not beyond being his construction on the information he possessed, or perhaps information given to him mistakenly by other sources (his comment to Littlechild suggests that he may have been scouting round for more information).

Anderson and Swanson did not think Kosminski was committed soon after the murder of Mary Kelly. Why they thought Kosminski was dead is another matter. Maybe the same reason Reid thought the Ripper was dead. Maybe confusion arising when Kosminski was sent from Leavesden to Colney Hatch. We don’t know. But there is no reason to suppose it was intentional.