How certain was Mac?

[Phil Carter]

Hello Jonathan,

To think- we are only 1 man and 2 steps away from agreement! Careful there- you'll be bracketed with the 'conspiratorial loonies' next. Psst! Don't mention Fenians or naughty policemen- nor (God Forbid) the possibility of Stride being murdered by someone other thau Druitt making dear old Jack a lesser class of killer!

Jesting apart- although yes- your theory is somewhat psychologically convoluted- I DO see what you are getting at. Like all of us- attempting to prove something is never going to be easy if it is different.

That's a crying shame in this game. From different angles the flak gets thrown BECAUSE it is different to the hand-me-down stuff weve been dished up over the years. Some of it is simply non-sensical to some of us. But change always takes time. Acceptance even longer.

I suspect that those questioning the level of the genre today do so because many more are now questioning the basis of conclusion given before. It must be a hard thing to swallow for some. Whilst I dont agree with your conclusions, for what its worth the theory is way, way better than the stuff Dan Farson came up with. Just my worthless opinion of course, which Ive had since about 1972 or 73. Thank heavens you havent included Farsons Dandenong-(clearly about Deeming) stuff. I think I might even go over and promot Ostrog if that happened!

Best wishes

Phil

[robhouse]

"And of course criticising your book. You've read my critique before so nobody falls for your 'show me the evidence' routine.

Two words: George Sims. Or is that too convoluted for you?"

Nobody falls for my 'show me the evidence' routine? You sure about that? Do you think that I and everybody on here memorizes all your posts? I have no idea what you are talking about with these two words? You made a pretty serious accusation, that I "manipulate the primary sources", and now you are unable to back it up. Nice. In the past, to my recollection, you have accused me of polemic, and "stacking-the-deck". That is clearly not the same thing as "manipulating the primary sources," since polemic is, effectively, what anyone does who writes history, at least in this field. Moreover, my book is less polemical than many as I consciously tried to consider many different interpretations of documents and sources. And I do not claim I am aways right!

Moreover, you are correct, I had no intention of criticizing people with whom you have had exchanges on here, MKHawley, Lynn, etc. (Although in fact I did not do this, and you misinterpreted my meaning, at the same time misinterpreting what I said as "Attacking you as a teacher" which I did not do. My point was that your rhetoric might sound convincing to a 14-year-old. I don't see how that is criticizing you as a teacher... but I am glad to hear that your students often disagree with you, and agree that you are histrionic. Bravo to them!) However, I do recall that you said that I am "oblivious to your own bias" and added, "Think I am alone here in thinking that?" Well, since I have never heard anyone but you tell me that I am oblivious to my own bias, I am wondering who else besides you thinks this.

"So you think 'proxy' is a big word? You think 'redacted' is a big word? God save us from the mediocre!" Again, you misunderstand me. I do not think these are particularly big words... I think that you think they are, as you sprinkle almost every post with the same words, much like a high school student will use a new word he has learned over and over again in his school papers.

But seriously... I am not going to bother to respond to the bulk of your current round of insults. It would take too long, and I really don't care very much. Still, you might want to read back to my post #39, in which I presented a simple, interesting (in my opinion), and valid observation. It was not intended to be insulting, or rude or anything. You didn't bother to respond to this, and instead responded with a rather off-the point and personal criticism of my book, my methods, etc. Why? Is this a better way of arguing that polemic?

RH

[Scott Nelson]

Re what policeman knew what I respectfully rèfer you to the thread 'No known suspect pre 1895 was Jack the Ripper',

It shows quite clearly that DURING THAT TIME PERIOD, 'Jack the Ripper' could not have been any kown suspect due to the comments of the police themselves.

I'm familiar with that thread. There were similar threads generated years before on this site. But they do not show quite clearly that the police didn't have a known suspect in mind after 1888.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Scott,

You're theoretically right.

According to various Scotland Yard sources, in the years following 1888 the cops [retired or still in harness] dredged up a plethora of definite-maybe suspects, ranging from dead, in prison, left London, just hanged, in an asylum or fled abroad.

But it was all nonsense.

Regards,

Simon

[Scott Nelson]

I know it was. Thank you Simon.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Scott,

Thank you.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

To Robhouse

Histrionic?

My students do not think I am histrionic?

They think I am boringly judicial; always teaching them to look at material from multiple angles and thus to realise that conclusions are always contingent.

What makes you say that, Robby?

Oh, because ... I wrote it. I am your source.

So, despite loathing everything about me and rubbishing me -- but affronted when I defend myself and give back some of your own vile medicine -- the moment I write something against myself you latch onto it as gospel.

Because it fits your own entrenched bias.

Even though it's me as the source -- the only source at that.

What a sucker you are.

And that's how you manipulate sources. As I wrote before it's not deceit. I am not ideologically crude like you, thanks. I don't see the world as black and white.

It's an overwhelming bias which act as blinkers. Your'e hardly alone. Nevertheless, it is intellectually indefensible to claim on the one hand that your book is essentially objective when you also play with a stacked deck.

Another example is that you wrote an appalling thing about other [un-named] people on the message boards, and then you shamelessly deny it. That is because you cannot conceive that you could be wrong, that you could make a mistake, and that you could be misunderstood.

With you it' always somebody else at fault.


To Simon

Do you think that Macnaghten took local, Dorset gossip about the late Mr. Druitt and exploited it for his own purposes, a few years later, to quash the Cutbush non-story? Though the Report was never sent, the other version was disseminated to the public from 1898.

For example, did Mac listen to Farquharson and then discover as easily as checking an old newspaper, that there was little to the tale: that Montie did not kill himself 'the same evening'as the Kelly murder, or any murder.

But ruthlessly Mac decided to use and even reshape the story for his own propagandist motives.

I am not going to argue with you, as you know my position.

I am just trying to fully understand your theory, when you write before that it was all 'nonsense'.

Could you be right? For sure. I would just add the word useful, as in it was useful nonsense.

[robhouse]

I am not going to bother with this any more.

RH

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

It's our gullibility which keeps the Ripper bandwagon rolling.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

Sorry Bev'

I cannot find the relevant post, so here is the point again:

George Sims from 'Lloyds Weekly' Magazine, Sept 22nd 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.'

Compared with:

LAYING THE GHOST OF JACK THE RIPPER by Sir Melville Macnaghten (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 ... The man, of course, was a sexual maniac, but such madness takes Protean forms ... Not infrequently the maniac possesses a diseased body, and this was probably so in the case of the Whitechapel murderer. 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,

That's 'one single day' (and night)?

[Jonathan H]

'One of us'?

On the Kosminski thread a poster has argued that an English gentleman could not have accepted one of their own as the fiend.

I agree -- and disagree.

I agree, that they would have preferred just about anybody else than a fellow Anglican, Gentile, gentleman, especially such a tragic chappie in no position to defend himself or enjoy the protections and rights of due process.

Yet the murderer's family (at least a brother), a local aristocratic Tory MP, an Old Etonian police chief, a Warden-Major (and Sims, the writer, but he was a socialist and therefore already half-cocked against the ruling elite) all did accept that Montie was the likeliest Jack.

In terms of historical methodology this makes it very potent, compared to those who predictably believed in a mad, impoverished, alien local, or a shady Yank, quack doctor, or a convicted Polish wife-poisoner.

Plus there were 'Jack' murders after Kelly?!

Yet it moved none of the above to exonerate Druitt, not once they were privy to this 'secret': it was 'one of us' not 'one of them'.

The better classes were given the bad news from 1898, and a stubborn residue of this distastefully unwelcome profile -- the West End Surgeon-Top-hatted Toff -- survived long after the 'drowned doctor' was forgotten along with Sims.