When did Mac think Druitt killed himself?

[Jonathan H]

It is often argued by secondary sources that because Sir Melville Macnaghten had the timing of Druitt's suicide quite wrong -- within hours of the Kelly atrocity -- in his 1894 Report(s) that not only did he not have accurate information about his preferred Ripper suspect, but that the mistaken timing of the murder/self-murder misled the police chief into seeing culpability where there was none, as had the MP who also had perpetuated this error.

Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette
United Kingdom
Saturday, 5 January 1889
FOUND DROWNED ... Witness [William Druitt] heard from a friend on the 11th of December that deceased had not been heard of at his chambers for more than a week ...

'The Bristol Times and Mirror' Feb 11th, 1891:

[the un-named MP Henry Farquharson] states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania'.

From 'The York Herald' and 'The Yorkshire Herald', Feb 18th 1891:

'The member of Parliament who recently declared that 'Jack the Ripper' had killed himself on the evening of the last murder, adheres to his opinion ...

Certainly Griffiths and especially Sims, from 1898 to 1917, entrenched this notion of the incriminating conjunction; of the murder and self-murder within hours by the shrieking husk of what was left of the 'doctor' before his fateful plunge.

Yet here is Mac's memoirs 1914:

'... 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 ... 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 ...'

Did Mac mis-remember the brother telling him, in 1891, that he had learned that his sibling was missing 'on the 11th' and thought Montie had killed himself on the 10th -- but of November, rather than December to which William to was actually referring?

I don't think so, but it's possible.

The overarching point is that Mac did not confirm what he had allowed his cronies to claim in public; that the murder and self-murder happened within hours. Druitt killed himself at least twenty-four hours later, Mac writes in his book -- perhaps longer?

[Jonathan H]

In the previous post I am arguing that Macnaghten knew more than fellow Old Etonian, Henry Farquharson about when Druitt actually killed himself, eg. not the same night due to some kind of self-loathing, mental collapse rendering him unable to do anything but stagger to the river.

This strongly suggests Mac had a source of information about Druitt more accurate than the politician, and he remembered that the murderer's suicide was not the same night, or morning, and remembered it correctly twenty-four years later. Of course the press reports of 1889 could have given the CID chief the accurate date -- but also that Druitt was a young barrister and teacher.

[Robert]

Hi Jonathan

But Druitt did not reside with his own people. And "absented himself from home" surely means more than just "went out." Obviously the Ripper had to go out to commit the murders. "Absented himself from home" suggests a more prolonged period of absence, maybe one, two or three days. If Druitt had done this while working for Valentine, he would surely not have been allowed to stay on till the end of November.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

All water has passed under the bridge, gently carrying away our Pooh sticks.

I agree with you completely that the Aberconway version was written post-1894.

Macnaghten had just five days from the date of the Sun's final article [19th February] in which to prepare, compose and write his memorandum [23rd February], and I find it unlikely that he would have written "Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2 . . ." in a draft version, and a couple of days later, in a comparatively offhand manner, write "I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely . . . etc etc" in the final document.

The Aberconway version provided Major Arthur Griffiths with his Ripper material [in places lifted almost word-for-word], so it must have been written at some time prior to November 1898, the publication date of the two-volume Mysteries of Police and Crime and also the tenth anniversary [to the month] of the Millers Court murder.

There's nothing like an anniversary for bamboozling Ripper-watchers.

As to Montie having confessed to a priest, can you be certain that the January 1899 North Country Vicar's second-hand story, told to him "with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification", wasn't simply a publicity stunt to promote the January 1899 reprint of Griffiths' book?

Herewith Cassell's colophon from "Mysteries of Police and Crime".



Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

I apologise for my 'Wildean' wit falling so flat so often on the boards. We live, we never bloody learn.

I think your theory of the Vicar being a publicity stunt for Griffith's big book is sublime.

It's just that, by an amazing coincidence, the Vicar's Ripper fits the real Druitt better than the profile being hustled by Mac via the Major and right after the Vicar comes Sims to denounce it -- quite rudely and quite inaccurately -- the deal-breaker being the very thing which is true of Montie and not of the 'drowned doctor': that he lived on and fuctioned for a while after Miller's Ct.

Plus the newspaper was going to enormous lengths to embarrass itself by claiming a reporter had met with the said cleric and he still would not cot confirm what was real and what was not -- except that he added that the murderer was 'at one time a surgeon' a very odd line indeed.

Most people who are surgeons stay in that vocation?

Whatever, the Clergyman moved closer to conceding that his Ripper might be the same man as Griffiths' suicided medico.

Except that the Vicar was admitting that the truth was being mixed with fiction, whereas Griffiths and Macnaghten were not admitting this: eg. 'family' became 'friends'. And before that Mac may have changed a surgeon's son into a middle-aged doctor" 'substantial truth in fictious form'.

On the other hand, you maybe right. That's it's just another coincidence into which I read too much.

To Robert

I counter-argue that you are perhaps missing the subtely of Macnaghten's dissemblingand deflections. Of his 'cutting the knot' to 'keep everyone statisfied'.

Druitt did, in fact, live with 'his own people', because broadly speaking he lived with his student charges in the lesser of his two vocations.

I agree that it is a peculiarly redundant line; about being 'absented' to commit the murders.

Well ... of course?! The harlots did not come to his home?

But if you read Sims you discover that he wrote in 1915 -- for the only time mentioning Blackheath by name -- that his reclusive invalid Ripper was kind of AWOL to go and commit the murders. He was missing from his mansion, which had become like his own convalescent home (in 1902, Sims 'revealed' that the fiend had been sectioned and told his doctors he wanted to kill harlots).

But how did the mad doctor's 'friends' know he was missing? Do they bribe his servants? Do they live with him?

Mac in his memoirs pointedly denied that the un-named Druitt had been 'detained' in an asylum, therefore perhaps he worked after all? What did he do? Mac does not say.

But then how can he be 'absented' if he work, if he is not a reclusive semi- invalid? It's not a crime to be away from your home at night? He's not a prisoner!

Is he ...?

I totally agree that the line implies that Druitt was absent from his family, and they were worried because they must have suspected he was the fiend. Which is still a strange tale since he's a grown-up and can go out?

The line is ambiguous, deliberately so.

For it also makes sense if the reason Druitt was sacked from the school -- whilst alive -- was for being out at night (to commit the murders) when he was supposed to be in minding the boys, as night-warden.

Absent without leave from your own home amongst your own 'poeple'. Because your home is actually a place of work, with professional duty-of-care commitments at night.

[Roy Corduroy]

Back to the original question of this thread. Whether its Nov 9th right after the Kelly murder, or Nov 10th, that's just one day later, and retains the dramatic effect presented in his memoir. I think some of what Macnaghten wrote was for effect. Regardless of how much he knew.

Did Mac mis-remember the brother telling him, in 1891, that he had learned that his sibling was missing 'on the 11th' and thought Montie had killed himself on the 10th -- but of November, rather than December to which William to was actually referring?

Whether there is any truth to the family believing in the guilt of their loved one Montague Druitt, and confiding that in anyone, is sort of the ultimate bar to be met in all this.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

Cheshire Cop?

To Roy

I think everything Mac wrote was for effect.

In terms of a courtroom with sources under examination and cross-examination, no that bar has not been met.

In terms of historical methodology, and the laws of probaility that bar has been met, since 2008, with the identification of the 'West of England' MP as a person who lived near the family and had elitist connections with Mac:

From 'The York Herald' and 'The Yorkshire Herald', Feb 18th 1891:

'The member of Parliament who recently declared that 'Jack the Ripper' had killed himself on the evening of the last murder, adheres to his opinion. Even assuming that the man Saddler [sic] is able to prove his innocence of the murder of Frances Coles, he maintains that the latest crime cannot be the work of the author of the previous series of atrocities ...'

From Macangyhten's Report, 1894, the filed version, in which Macnaghten does not believe in Druitt's guilt but the family sure does:

'No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer; many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. 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:

(1) A Mr M. J. Druitt, said to be a doctor & of good family -- who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, & whose body (which was said to have been upwards of a month in the water) was found in the Thames on 31st December -- or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.

From Sims, Feb 16th 1902, knowing as we do now that the frantic 'friends' stand in for brother William:

' ... At the time [jack's] dead body was found in the Thames, his friends, who were terrified at his disappearance from their midst, were endeavouring to have him found and placed under restraint again'.

Sims, April 5th 1903:

' ... A little more than a month later the body of the man suspected by the chiefs at the Yard, and by his own friends, who were in communication with the Yard, was found in the Thames. The body had been in the water about a month.'

In my opinion you under-appreciate what a careful break Macnaghten is making by having the murder kill himself just a day later, not hours after Kelly as Griffiths and Sims have claimed, with Mac as their authoritative source (notice that Sims, above, began backdating the recovery of the body too).

For one thing the story of the tormented shrieker staggering to the river does not work with the 10th as the date of suicide -- he cannot be plausibly staggering, bloodily, for a day and a night with nobody noticing -- and sure enough Mac drops the location of the suciide. He drops the most colourful detail about the Druitt tale.

But he has to.

On the other hand, Mac ciuld mollfiy Sims -- asuming the writer pal was not in on it all along -- by claiming he wrote the 10th when he meant the 9th.

It is like trying to pin down the Cheshire Cat.

The flaw in modern Ripperology was not even to realise that 'forgetful' Mac bequeaths a lingering, tantalizing grin ...

[Roy Corduroy]

But, Jonathan, I didn't say forgetful.

I read Macnaghten's Ripper chapter in the memoir as a whole. It has a dramatic element - the killer committed suicide the next day after the Kelly murder.

Macnaghten appeared to know enough about Montague Druitt, as he put in his papers, that his body was found after being in the river a month in December. He knows the general outline.

So again, his memoir is somewhat written for effect. And besides, wasn't your initial post about Mac sort of forgetting what you think his brother told him, or misremembering it by a month? Or leaving a sort of code behind, is that what you mean?

Maybe I don't know the gist of the thread. You said forget, not me Twisting and turning here,

Roy

[Jonathan H]

To Roy

Yes, Mac writes for dramatic effect, eg. the graffiti is definitely by the killer, the Ripper was almost ominpotent against the state, so Protean he could have been anybody, and so on.

That is why not including the Thames detail sticks out, in the reverse sense.

The chapter should climax as does Griffiths and Sims; the fiend killing himself dramatically -- or melodramtically -- immediately, eg. the same morning. Exactly as the MP has it.

Instead, Mac flubs the drama, with-holding the method and location of self-murder because of the tacit admission that it was not almost simultaneous with the final murder. The story in Sims is now nullified.

Mac tries (strains?) to rescue the line, dramatically speaking, by having the fiend toppling one sec. of state and nearly another!

The Ripper did himself in not that morning of the 9th of Nov., or that afternoon, or that night, but sometime after midnight, persumably the following day? In fact, he implies maybe he didn't: eg. 'on or about ...'.

Maybe it was longer?

It is, arguably, textual evidence that Mac knew more than his source, Farquharson about the real Druitt, even if he is conflating what William Druitt told him, or he read it in the 1889 account.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

What do you make of the North Country vicar's assertion that the murderer "was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End . . ."?

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

My theory is that this comment -- if it is about Druitt and it may not be -- backs up what Tom Cullen theorised in 1965.

That Druitt was part of the Toynbee Hall, social reform movement led by Samuel Barnett to help the impoverished, who preached in Oxford for privileged gentlemen to come and help -- to answer the 'calling to the East'.

Of course, Druitt could have been involved in 'rescue work' not connected with that particular charity too. Anyhow, it would give him a working knowledge of the 'evil, quarter mile' which social reformers called the abyss within the abyss -- and which is exactly where the 'canonical' murders were committed.

The Vicar implies a man who does not reside or work -- for money -- in the East End, but who goes there for charitable purposes.

It is my theory, furthermore, that the Vicar never tells an untruth about the un-named Druitt (only the title was fictitious: 'The Whitechurch Murders' eg. 'substantial truth under fictitious form').

Then how come the cleric says to the reporter that this epileptic maniac was 'at one time a surgeon'?

That most certainly does not match Druitt (though, in this hall of mirrors, it does match the 'Drowned Doctor' Super-suspect whoich is a veiled variation of Druitt).

My theory is that the Vicar knew that Griffith's book focussed on the same figure who took his own life, which the cleric was under instructions not to confirm --and not to confirm about the suicide either. He also knew that the same suspect was really a barrister and teacher, but from a family of doctors.

Therefore, I think under direct questioning he wanted to defend Druitt, somewhat, as a gentleman of 'unblemished character' who was not in his right mind when he committed the murders; who was mentally, incurably ill, and had done good things in his life too!

So the Vicar mentioned the charity work and -- having read Griffiths and assuming it was all kosher -- threw in that he must have been a doctor (before he moved across to the law).

Sims from 1902, having body-slammed the Vicar in 1899, will adopt this very tenet of the silly cleric's suspposedly worthless tale: Sims' Ripper will also be 'at one time a surgeon' but has not practiced for years due to his mental illness and previous incarceration in an asylum -- perhaps 'twice'.

Also, epileptic mania's alleged symptoms included homicide, suicide, shrieking and raving -- all vivid elements of Sims' semi-fictional version of Druitt.

You can draw a straight line between the family's 'belief', the MP's 'doctrine' the police chief's 'that remakable man', and the Vicar's 'certainty'.