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

[caz]

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.

Hi Jonathan,

But you have conceded more than once that this is your interpretation, which others are not obliged to share. So my point was that you were making a circular argument by expressing astonishment that Druitt's terrible murderous secret was mostly kept under wraps. I agree, it would have been astonishing if Druitt dunnit, and there were people who knew he'd dunnit, yet his identity never leaked outside of Mac's memos.

An alternative explanation is that nobody had any proof that he did have this terrible secret - all was 'rational theory' and conjecture (Mac), belief (the family - yet to be confirmed - and of course belief is quite different from knowledge), or malicious gossip (arguably Farqy) - and only on the part of a very small number of people. That would surely explain why the 'leak' never became a waterfall.

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.

But of course, Mac had divulged his secret, albeit in the memos he left to posterity. And like Anderson, he could only have thought he knew. Moral, not legal certainty.

Anderson also claimed in public under his own name that he knew the identity of the ripper - a 'definitely ascertained fact' - and he never did divulge the name. We only have Swanson's pencil suggesting one privately, and again it's Mac who hands us Kosminski's name as an alternative suspect.

My interpretation, as you know, is that Mac was not being dishonest when he said there was never any shadow of proof against Druitt or anyone else, merely his own 'rational theory', backed up with private info which implied his own family believed him guilty.

I'm still missing the crucial link between the family and Mac, which would still be hearsay regardless of how reputable the source may have been. Loose-lipped Victorian vicars and MPs don't impress me much.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jonathan H]

Caz,

Each to their own, of course, but the notion you put that Mac was wrong about the family's belief is just so unlikely.

All other primary sources have him as competent and meticulous and compassionate.

And Druitt's culpability is not my assertion -- it's Macnaghten's.

Why did he think that?

I am arguing that Mac was, in this instance, being honest, that he was well-informed, and that he had a class, race, sectarian, and professional prejudice to get the Druitts -- and Montie who could never receive due process -- off the hook by considering the arguments often used by modern posters, and yet he could not and also believed.

He dropped 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog as less than minor suspects, as nothing.

I think that in a prankish kind of bureaucratic revenge Mac misled the pious, incorruptible but insufferably egocentric Anderson about 'Kosminski': that the Polish Jew was chronically guilty of the sin of Onan -- true -- that his family 'suspected the worst' -- not true, and lifted from Druitt -- that he was sectioned a few months after Kelly -- not true -- and that he was long deceased -- not true, and also lifted from Druitt.

To claim that Anderson was talking through his hat is a huge call to make.

To say that a responsible and competent person who was there is quite mistaken needs to have a very persuasive argument!

I think too many people here dismiss Macnaghten when he was there and he was competent (to investigate the surgeon's son tale posthumously).

The reason I can then argue Anderson was mistaken is because it is fair to side with one primary source against another, if you judge that one knew more than the other (eg. Anderson has nothing to say in the extant record about Druitt, whereas Macnaghten -- who knows that 'Kosminski' was still alive -- in sources by him and on his behalf, implicitly and explicitly debunks the poor Pole and plumps for the fellow gent.

Arguably there is no difference, in this context, between knowledge and belief. Especially if Druitt left behind information in his confession -- if that is what he did -- which Mac knew, and knew that only the killer knew?

Had Druitt lived, as Sims asserts, I think he would have been tried and convicted, or found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

You are also being fooled by Mac's Report, official version, as many are.

Mac had no 'rational theory' at all.

What he had was a family, or at least a brother, telling him that their deceased member was the Ripper.

This was a no-brainer to prove them wrong for Jack had just killed another poor woman in Whitechapel: Frances Coles.

But the family, with every reason to clutch at that straw, remained un-moved, as did Farquharson who was 'adamant', and so was Macnaghten -- and for the rest of his life.

for the reason Druitt was not arrested was not due to a lack of proof, or even proof's shadow, but because he was long deceased.

The alternate, sexed-up version of the 'Home Office Report' completely fooled experienced crime writer chums on this point too (unless they were in on it. Griffiths, after all, knew that 'friends' was standing in for 'family').

Druitt, albeit un-named, begins in the extant record not with Mac but with the Dorset community, just as the chief's memoir reveals: information received 'some years after' the fiend had killed himself.

As a deft operator of the political/media game Mac had done a brilliant job keeping the lid on the tale, between the MP in 1891 and the Vicar in 1899, both quashed and forgotten (the former in the 'Western Mail' in 1892 and the latter eviscerated by Sims in 1899).

Brilliant because instead of sitting on the information Mac hid it in plain sight by launching 'substantial truth in fictitious form' into the public arena in such a way that the Druitts were protected, the Yard's rep was enhanced, nobody need sue or be ruined, and even the cold-blooded, 'Protean' maniac was cleaned up; as a tormented gent who did us all a favour 'the same evening' of the final atrocity (so, comfortingly even Jack was repulsed by Miller's Ct, conforming to the Jekyll-Hyde, horror/repentance template.)

The reason Mac in 1913 said he had destroyed the material when he hadn't was, I believe, to discreetly reassure the surviving Druitts (William died in 1908). eg. That nothing would be left behind to incriminate their good name as he alone at the Yard knew their secret as they had dealt with him a generation before.

But in reality a stoically dying Mac could not let go of his greatest achievement in detection, such as it was eg. chatting with a few, fellow toffs. He believed, nonetheless, that he had [posthumously] laid to rest the Ripper's ghost.

So he left the file in the Scotland Yard archive, though with Druitt there almost nothing as a slave to his conscience, and left the press-friendly version with his family (the first version says the family 'believed' while the other has Mac pretty certain).

Lastly, I think the Vicar was not 'loose-lipped'; that he did a good job of standing his ground with the 'Mail' reporter sent to interrogate him, about what was fact and what was fiction.

He added that the Ripper had once been a surgeon having already admitted that he suffered from epileptic mania.

Having debunked the clergyman's tale, Sims, in 1902, adopted and propagated that idea of the 'mad doctor' as not having practised as a medico -- eg. at one time a surgeon -- and who, furthermore, went to his watery grave having committed 'homicide', 'raving', 'shrieking', and then 'suicideing' -- all symtoms of epileptic mania.

But hey, what do I know ..?

[Jonathan H]

http://mjdruitt.blogspot.co.uk/

This is new blog on Druitt by a History student in Bristol, which I lifted from the other site (put by their by Chris Scott).

There are some excellent bits and pieces about the Druitt family, and the alarming number who tragically killed themselves.

Also, Farquharson and Sims are mentioned; as respectively the bridging source and as a Mac source-by-p[roxy.

The main flaw, as I see it, in the summary is that the primary sources are not compared and contrasted; as to what is similar and different, and then trying to work out why?

There are mistakes of fact too:

- The first MP article is claimed to be written by an 'unimpressed' reporter. Actually he is so impressed that he refuses to divulge the full story out of fear, he writes, of the libel laws.

- That Mac wrote two quite different versions of his Report is not explained, so the official one is quoted when it is 'Aberconway' which is meant, and vice versa.

- That Mac's memoirs do not repeat certain elements of the MP and Sims' tale, eg. that the killer did not kill himself the same night, is not noticed.

- Mac's 1913 comments do not exist, but the claim that he was dismissed on the 30th of Nov is there, now arguably redundant.

The essential thrust is that Macnaghten was ignorant about the real Druitt, the rotten core of the apple.

This blog an excellent example of how unconscious bias works, or is simply repeated without people realising it is biased towards a dominant paradigm (though at least Druitt is not described as gay).

[Jonathan H]

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=172160#post172160

This is a perfect illustration of the two kinds of, eh, people you can enocunter on these boards.

Chris George disgarees with me and explains why. It is a perfectly reasonable opinion: that none of the top cops really knew what they were taliing about but wanted to seem, especially once retired, that they had darn solved that infernal case for which they received so much tabloid strife. That they all disagreed -- with the arguable exception of two -- and this gives it away that the actual suspect is less important then the need to be seen to have solved it (pick a Ripper, any Ripper?)

Chris knows that I agree regarding all of them except Sir Melville Macnaghten.

The defencse of my position is that Mac's memoirs do not make any mistakes about Druitt and repudicate the myth he had himnself created via Griffiths and Sims: that police were about arrest the mad doctor, an asylum inmate, who had drowned himself in the Thames within hours of the Kelly murder.

That memoir is the critical source as Mac pulls right back from that 'shilling shocker': the police did not know about Druitt until 'some years after' he was deceased, he is not confirmed to be a doctor, is pointedly denied to have been the inmate of an asylum, and he did not kill himself within hours of the final murder.

That's the core of my argument for the relibality of Macnaghten on the fiend, plus he knows that 'Kosminski' was alive and sectioned long after the Kelly murder, and that a prime suspect fled to the States.

The memoirs of Mac match the Farquharson revelation of 1891, except about the timing of Druitt's sucidie, which Mac gets right.

As for the other poster, he has to cling to unlikely theories or else it's kind of all over in that quarter.

[Tom_Wescott]

The other person being Scott Nelson? He doesn't really have a horse in any race, Jonathan. I'm sure if he disagrees with you it's based solely on his interpretation of the evidence.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan H]

To Tom

If you check out the link you will see that the issue is about ridicule substituting for a counter-argument.

The likely initial source of Macnaghten's 'private information' is of course MP Henry Farquharson, but I can understand the need of some people to refuse to accept this obvious connection because the implications are so galling.

For it would mean that Macnaghten did have an accurate, biographical source on Druitt -- the surgeon's son -- and that the notion of him as the Ripper did indeed originate with his Tory family, or certain family members, who lived in Dorset, right down the road from the Tory politician.

To Chris George

That Druitt was deliberately hidden, at least to some extent, is a fact and not a theory.

The late barrister had family members. Either Macnaghten and Griffiths, or just Griffiths and his publisher, or just Macnaghten (verbally), altered this fact into fiction -- into 'friends' for public consumption in 1898.

Macnaghten agreed with this alteration because he allowed George Sims to continue publishing that it was these 'friends' who were frantically trying to find their vanished member. Mac must have once known that this was actually an older brother trying to find Montie.

William Druitt is thus hidden. Is it not likely that you would also hide the actual person you believed was the fiend?

The extra details about the 'drowned doctor' which Mac supplied Sims, most not in his Report(s), in the 1900's are also fictional.

Yet they are each a deflective exaggeration of the real Druitt: that he was sacked from his lesser vocation for a few days is turned into a Ripper who has been completely unemployed for years; that he was found with a couple of substantial cheques and thus he becomes fabulously wealthy; that he was found with a season rail pass and so he does little but travel around aimlessly on public transport; that his father was a docter and his mother was sectioned in a lunatic asylum are both subsumed into the son's profile who becomes a middle-aged asylum veteran; that Macnaghten secretly and posthumously investigated this suspect in 1891 becomes a monolithic police dragnet fast closing on the 'doctor' in 1888.

Therefore Druitt is hidden by this profile.

The question is was it by accident or by design?

I find it highly unlikely to be by accident because we have the precedent of the family -- the ones who could sue -- carefully fictionalised between 'Aberconway' and 'Mysteries of Police and Crime', and then in 'The Referee' and 'Lloyds weekly'.

For myself it is too-too-convenient for William Druitt to anxiously read Dagonet-Sims on the Eipper and be so quietly relieved. Though there would be members of his respectable circles who recalled that he had a tragic, younger brother, who drowned himself in the Thames at the end of 1888, Montague was completely different from the 'drowned doctor': a young, hard-working barrister and teacher (and those who really had good memories M J Druitt took his own life on Dec 4th 1888, not November 9th).

[Scott Nelson]

Did Druitt live a in suburb six miles south of Whitechapel during the murders?

Was he about 41 years of age at the times of the murders?

Had he ever spent time in an asylum?

Had he ever been in India?

Did he have any family members who were clergymen?

[Jonathan H]

Montague John Druitt,

- lived at Blackheath, about six miles from Whitechapel.

- was 31 at the time of the murders exactly ten years younger than his age is claimed to be in 'Aberconway'. In his memoirs, Macnaghten does not commit himself to any age for the 'Simon Pure' murderer.

- He had never been in an asylum as Macnaghten pointedly writes in his memoirs; never 'detained' in a mental inssitituion -- unlike his mother who had been. Sims suggests this was the inevitable fate awaiting the 'mad doctor'.

- So far as I know, from the meagre record, Druitt had never been in India, unlike Sir Melville and Farquharason whose affluent families owned estates there.

- Druitt's first cousin was Charles Druitt, an Anglican Reverend and later a Dorset Vicar (it is to him Montie may have confessed he was 'Jack' and who is the source of the 1891 leak which was picked up by the local MP).

[Scott Nelson]

Newland Smith did.

Newland Smith was.

Newland Smith did.

Newland Smith was there.

Newland Smith's father was.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Scott. Who exactly is this 'Newland Smith'? When and by whom was he first suggested as Farquharson's man? I've only ever seen Druitt put forth.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Newland Smith is another barrister, about whom Scott Nelson is suggesting that MM mixed up the details with Druitt. See http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=15301

Is that an obnoxious way to butt in, or what?

[Tom_Wescott]

Yes, I'm not an idiot and I get that. I want to know if Newland Smith can be determined beyond reasonable doubt to have been Farq's man, as opposed to Druitt. This is important because Farq has become a major pillar in the argument that holds up Druitt.

Where is the argument and details regarding Smith laid out, or when can we expect them?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Didn't claim you're an idiot. Especially after the HUGE stoopid thing I myself posted last night about the year the official MM was written. Was just butting in smartalecky-like. I'm sure Scott Nelson will clarify.

[Tom_Wescott]

Newland Smith

I looked at Howard's site and outside of simply stating as fact that Newland Smith was Farq's suspect, Scott Nelson has thus far not provided much in the way of supporting material, even though I saw posts from Paul Begg and Debs asking him to do so. He doesn't sound like much of a suspect at all. In fact, the only one who suspected him may have been...himself!

From Jack the Ripper A-Z:

Educated at London University (1881–87) and Lincoln’s Inn (1887–90). Called to the bar, June 1890, but certified insane and transferred to Holloway Asylum and Sanatorium, Virginia Water (cf. John Sanders) in October. Discharged October 1891, but immediately re-admitted on an urgency order, his case notes recording that he believed himself, ‘Accused of being Jack the Ripper’. Transferred to Cane Hill Asylum, 1894, where he died in 1898. The grounds for his accusation are unknown, but as an unruly and depressive patient with organic brain disease, he might have incurred suspicion. Until the twentieth century, the legend that his room in Virginia Water was ‘Jack the Ripper’s room’ lived on.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan H]

To Tom

I argue that it is a measure of the strength of the Farquharson breakthrough that this marginal, inconsequential figure is offered up as a serious alternative.

It just does not match the sources we have, admittedly meagre and contradictory.

It's a form of denial.

Of course to accept the bleeding obvioius here, that Farquharason is talking about Druitt -- proving that Macnaghten confused Druitt with nobody -- is to fracture the old paradigm that Macnaghten did not have access to anybody who knew the basics about his preferred suspect ('son of surgeon'). It also exposes a nonsencial flaw in the old paradigm; that Macnaghten would not simply talk with people who had known Druitt, or at least just check out some old newspapers about his drowning.

This was a police chief celebrated for his uncannily retentive memory, for his diligence, his hands-on apprroach to infamous crimes, and for his fascination with the Whitechapel murders. Therefore, forgetful, hands-off Mac of many secondary sources was always a grotesque caricature of the real hsitorical figure according to all other available primary sources.

Mac's often ignored and/or misunderstood memoirs always made this paradigm a slender reed upon which to build much of what is called 'Ripperology', and it was decisively cut in 2008 with the essay 'The West of England MP--Identified' by Andrew Spallek.

In now two sources from 1891 [the un-named] Farquharson, who is serenely un-moved by the murder of Coles and the arrest of Sadler, refers to a suicided surgeon's son who once lived in, presumably, his proximity (a wing of the Druitts lived nine miles away and were of the same bourgeoeise class, the same Anglican church affiliation, and the same Converative Party affiliation) and who had killed himself 'the same evening' as the final murder.

This is the tale which Macnaghten fed Griffiths and Sims from 1898 and into the 1900's, but the MP's story was carefully reshaped to protect everybody: the 'friend' and brother who were alarmed at Montie's vanishing act became just frantic, anomic 'friends'; a young, surgeon's son became a middle-aged doctor; a sporty professional with two jobs became a wealthy, unemployed recluse; his imminent incarceration, had he not killed himself, became his periodic, previous incarcerations in asylums; and most shamelessly the complete police ignorance about this suspect was turned into a fast-closing dragnet practically pushing the fiend into the river.

The one detail Macnaghten, however, did not change was Farquharson's mistake -- or the mistake relayed to him by a non-family member -- regarding the timing of Druitt's suicide: 'the same evening' as the Dorset street atrocity.

I argue this was left unchanged for the cronies because Macnaghten had discovered, in his private 1891 investigation, that it was wrong -- but it was usefully wrong in hiding the late Mr. Druitt from his peers, and it had already been put on the public record albeit obscurely and briefly.

If Mac had not known this to be the wrong timing, then he would have changed it as he had fictionalsied every other detail -- yet he didn't because it was already a handy fiction.

The counter-argument that Macnaghten never did any more investigation than clubbily chatting with Farquharson, his fellow Old Etonian, fellow Tory, and fellow Indian Plantation owner, is reasonable but belied by Mac's much remarked upon penchant for super-sleuthing -- and a crucial detail in 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper'.

In his 1914 memoirs Macnaghten tiptoed away from this 'incriminating' conjunction ('... soon after ...') a fact un-noticed until very recently. Instead he times the Ripper as having a full day and a night, if not longer, after murdering Kelly to return home then implode, and then go somehere else to kill himself. Subsequently his 'own people' discovered that he was missing (Macnaghten shies away from where and how he took his own life because the bloody stagger to the river is no longer tenable).