How certain was Mac?

[Cogidubnus]

What's in a day?

So, probably I'm misunderstanding, and if so please correct me...

In 1907 or thereabouts MacNaghten was still feeding Sims the old line regarding the killer's mind being so disturbed by the excesses of 9th November 1888 that he throws himself into the Thames immediately: "It would be impossible for the author of the Miller's-court horror to have lived a life of apparent sanity one single day after that maniacal deed" etc

By the time of "Days of My Life" in 1914 he's quoting a one day interval: "I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror ... committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888"

So the progression in debunking Sims has opened up the time interval from less than a day, to a day...Perhaps I'm a little thick, but whilst I suppose it represents a small shift, it's not THAT much of a debunk factor yet?

Or am I missing something?

Best wishes

Dave

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Jonathan

I quite understand if you are sick of it. That's fine. I am driven by a larger historical purpose; to revrese a train which has been going in the wrong direction for decades (excluding competing Expresses about Aaron Kosminski and Frances Tumbelty).

No I'm not by any means sick of it...far from it...just wondered if there'd be a fresh twist, and there is...

Hi Stephen

Jonathan seems not to be able to factor into his theory the notion that MM could possibly have not been telling the truth and had simply used Druitt as a (conveniently dead) fall guy.

Well whether so or not, (and I can understand strong feelings either way), I still feel it's interesting trying to reconstruct what MMs been up to!

Best wishes all

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Dave

What I am doing is amassing textual evidence that Macnaghten is pointedly debunking what Sims wrote, specifically in 1907.

A source we know, moreover, that Mac contributed an unsolicited note to regarding the names and dates of the victims.

I am seeking debate on this point, that Mac, publicly and under his own name, subtly backed away from the murder and self-murder within hours.

For the old paradigm asserted that this timing was both why Mac thought Druitt was likely the fiend, and therefore being wrong about the timing discredited both this police chief and his Ripper suspect.

I quite understand if you are sick of it. That's fine. I am driven by a larger historical purpose; to revrese a train which has been going in the wrong direction for decades (excluding competing Expresses about Aaron Kosminski and Frances Tumbelty).

Before I receive another slamming, I'm being ironic.

To Stephen Thomas

In fairness to myself I have factored this in, over and over, and put a counter-argument to it, which I think is stronger. You have every right to disagree. Most do.

Look, I'm already in trouble with Dave for repeating myself -- though the Sims' quote and Mac's quite, in counterpoijnt, are new -- and so you will have to take my word for it that there are earlier posts by me that do address your perfectly, plausible theory (of the unreliablility of a slyly dissembling primary source).

[Stephen Thomas]

So Sims has to have been "fed" by McNaghten...let's be honest, what other logical source is there?

Jonathan seems not to be able to factor into his theory the notion that MM could possibly have not been telling the truth and had simply used Druitt as a (conveniently dead) fall guy.

[Cogidubnus]

So Sims has to have been "fed" by McNaghten...let's be honest, what other logical source is there? So far, so good...(though why do I get the feeling I've been at this point before?)...

Let's be up-front Jonathan (says he naively but not unkindly)...Where are we going with this thread, that we haven't been in the past few weeks?

Best wishes

Dave

[Jonathan H]

George Sims' Drowned Doctor Super-suspect

I am here comparing Sims' largest piece on the Ripper, his 'Who was Jack the Ripper?' for the prestigious 'Lloyds Weekly' magazine on Sept. 22nd 1907.

What we see here between this source and Mac's 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' seven years later is the same certainty, a judgement constrained only by the lack of due process for the sucided Super-suspect (Mac goes even further by elimiating all other suspects).

Both of these sources, arguably, derive from Macnaghten and his 'Aberconway' document, with additional material (eg. the Jewish suspect worked in a Polish hospital; the Russian doctor suspect was in an asylum abroad, the English doctor had a trim beard and walked back to his home, six miles away, after each murder; the other major suspect was an American medico) which all must have been given verbally to Sims' for his various writings in the Edwardian Era, including this one.

But what we also see is that Macnaghten pulled back and even debunked certain notions he he had anonymously disseminated to the public via his famous writer/chum.

Here is the most significant example, though there are several:

Sims, 1907:

'It would be impossible for the author of the Miller's-court horror to have lived a life of apparent sanity one single day after that maniacal deed. He was a raving madman them and a raving madman when he flung himself in the Thames.'

Mac. 1914:

'On the morning of 9th November, Mary Jeanette Kelly... 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 ... committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888 ...'

That is a single day.

[Jonathan H]

The Secret of the Suicide?

More primary sources on Mac's certainty:


Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
4 June 1913
FATE OF JACK THE RIPPER

Retiring British Official Says Once Famous Criminal Committed Suicide
London Cable to the New York Tribune
The fact that "Jack the Ripper", the man who terrorized the East End of London by the murder of seven women during 1888, committed suicide, is now confirmed by Sir Melville Macnaughten (sic), head of the criminal investigation department of Scotland Yard, who retired on Saturday after 24 years' service.

Sir Melville says:

"It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that "Jack the Ripper" committed suicide six months before I joined the force.

That remarkable man was one of the most fascinating of criminals. Of course, he was a maniac, but I have a very clear idea as to who he was and how he committed suicide, but that, with other secrets, will never be revealed by me."


And:


‘The Colonist’, July 25th, 1913:

'Sir Melville Macnaghten, the retiring head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, has imparted the interesting information to an interviewer that he knows the identity and the fate of “Jack the Ripper”. That “fascinating criminal”, as Sir Melville calls him, with professional partiality, committed suicide for a reason which he knows but has determined to keep secret. Up to the present we had been under the belief that “Jack the Ripper” had been identified with a criminal lunatic who died in Broadmoor a good many years ago. From his reticence as to the identity of the criminal, we conclude he was not the Jewish butcher he was believed to be, but some maniac of superior position.’

What is the secret reason that the un-named Druitt committed suicide?

Surely, it is not a secret that the fiend must have been tormented, especially if you have read Griffiths and Sims and the reproductions of that notion in the popular media (eg. Frank Richardson, Ford Maddox Ford, et. al.)

eg. Did he not kill himself immediately after the horror of Miller's Court?

Perhaps not, for in 1913 and 1914 Macnaghten claimed that the murderer had taken his own life on Nov. 10th, which is twenty-fours later. In his memoirs Mac hinted that it might have been even longer.

Was the secret the confession to a priest, a detail which never appears in any Mac document, but arguably a veiled version does perhaps appear in Sims: a Mac source-by-proxy.

[Jonathan H]

To Hunter

I would counter-argue it this way: Mac always wrote for effect and never made any 'errors'.

It is very unlikely that a competent, hands-on, compassionate police administrator, one know for his incredible memory and obessed with the Ripper case, would not have sought first-hand information from the Druitt family, or a Druitt.

That Mac the 'action man' would not have checked out the MP's tale for himself.

Macnaghten's dilemma was that he agreed with the family.

What then ...?

Druitt could never be arrested but he was, as far as you can be sure about a dead person, Jack the Ripper.

I think that Macnaghten knew that since the story had partially leaked once, in 1891, it could do so again and he prepared a document of state -- because of 'The Sun' articles -- though never sent and only archived, which tried to do many things at once.

To cut the know to 'keep everyone satisfied'.

One of those things was to try and debunk Inspector Race as a man with a grudge who was libelling the family of a retired and distinguished polcie officer, Cutbush.

Mac experimented with a cheeky lie: that Cutbush was related to the the un-named madman in 'The Sun' to sufficienly frighten the Liberal govt; that this tarbaby might be headed for the libel courts.

Mac even claimed that Cutbush was 'well-known' and implied that the cop had been the de-facto father of the poor, ill boy.

As it was, this was a trigger never pulled.

Only the cronies and family saw this deceitful reference in the alternate version, itself deceitfully different, where it didn't matter.

[Hunter]

Jonathan,

We really don't know if Macnaghten got any information from 'primary sources' or not. He seemed to not get any primary source information about Cutbush and his relations.

[Jonathan H]

'... came to me subsequently ...'

Or this found by Chris Scott:

Pittsburgh Press
6 July 1913

'Following out his observation regarding the necessity of the ideal detective "keeping his mouth shut," Macnaughton (sic) carried into retirement with him knowledge of the identity of perhaps the greatest criminal of the age, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 by the fiendish mutilation and murder of seven women.
"He was a maniac, of course, but not the man whom the world generally suspected," said Sir Melville. "He committed suicide six months before I entered the department, and it is the one great regret of my career that I wasn't on the force when it all happened. My knowledge of his identity and the circumstances of his suicide came to me subsequently. As no good purpose could be served by publicity, I destroyed before I left Scotland Yard every scrap of paper bearing on the case. No one else will ever know who the criminal was - nor my reasons for keeping silent."

Note the proprietorial claim he makes to the Ripper's identity. He alone knows on the Force, and he takes the knowledge with him. Whereas the rest of the 'world' are on quite the wrong track (Anderson? Forbes Winslow? 'The Sun'?)

In his memoirs, Macnaghten claims to have started at the Met on June 1st 1889. Give or take a day, that is just about exactly six months after Druitt drowned himself, rather then the near seven months he implies in his Report(s), and hustled to Griffiths and Sims.

That word 'subsequently' is the first public hint of a posthumous revelation, not one already on file about this suspect. This aspect, obvious from the primary sources between 1888 and 1891, was explicitly confirmed by Mac's memoirs the following year.

[Jonathan H]

One of the persistent modern myths of the Jack the Ripper 'mystery' is that Anderson was the only senior policeman to claim he had actually solved the case, or words/notion to that effect, eg. a definitely, ascertained fact.

But there are a number of primary sources which arguably disprove this paradigm of several secondary sources, including Mac's own words from 1913 -- such as the following:

Sunday Independent
June 8, 1913

Column by J.H. Cox

'... Sir Melville is a sherlockholmeslikeman ... the secret as to the real identity of Jack-the-Ripper will perish with him. He could tell the whole history of that fascinating personage. But he won't. He said to the reporter--"Jack the Ripper was a maniac. I have a very clear idea of who he was and how he committed suicide. But that with other secrets will never be revealed by me.'