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On another thread, Tom W, whom I hold in very high regard (and affection) made a comment to the effect that Macnaghten thought Druitt was a stronger suspect than 'Kosminski' perhaps because the timing of his suicide explained the cessation of the murders.
This is, I argue, a stubborn and persistent myth.
But what complicates dispelling this myth is that it was one started by Macnaghten himself.
In his non-identical twin Report(s) he gives the impression that Druitt -- whether a minor or a major suspect -- snugly fit the 'awful glut' criteria of a killer unable to function because he killed himself [instantly] after the Miller's Ct. horror-show.
He did this to square the circle that Druitt was a suspect whom the police knew about at the time or very soon after he took his own life.
In Sims the image of the police is enhanced even further regarding the 'investigation' into this super-suspect.
Now the 'police' strongly suspect the 'doctor' before he takes his fateful plunge after the final atrocity. In fact, the police were trying to find him to arrest him as the fiend.
Thus his suicide becomes confirmation for their professional belief in his culpability.
The implication is that the physicians of the 'mad doctor', when he has been periodically sectioned, have contacted Scotland Yard to convey their worst fears about a patient who 'confessed' to a compulsion to savage harlots. This allowed them to narrow their suspect list from seven, to three, and now to one.
By the time the 'friends' of the missing medico also contact police with their dire suspicions, the police -- so Sims tells it -- already know all about their insane pal and have issued, too late as it turns out, an arrest warrant. Sims writes that the killer could not have appeared normal for even 'a single day' and so would have died by his own hand or been immediately institutionalised -- again.
In his memoirs, Macnaghten came [mostly] clean about both of these mythologically incriminating timings.
While he still adhered to the 'awful glut' theory, the murderer did not kill himself instantly -- it was after a single day, perhaps longer.
Nor were the police (eg. Anderson) searching for him whilst alive.
Nor was it the timing of his suicide which brought him to police attention. It was information received 'some years after'; information that he was Jack the Ripper.
Who did this bombshell come from?
Macnaghten had to veil this somewhat but again the implication is that 'his own people' noticed he was 'absented' when he should not have been (the hunt by the older brother after Montie vanished from his places of work and living).
Until that information arrived, Mylett, and/or McKenzie, and especially Coles had police adherents regarding those poor victims being murders by Jack.
The real Ripper investigation by the police was long and disappointing.
Therefore, to learn in about 1891 this 'secret', that a young, English barrister who took his own life in late 1888 was the likely fiend, was all very unwelcome. It would mean the police had been chasing a ghost now laid to rest by posthumously learning of his dual identity -- the very title of Mac's memoir chapter.
A convenient suicide would have been one after the Coles murder, not two years before.
This is, I argue, a stubborn and persistent myth.
But what complicates dispelling this myth is that it was one started by Macnaghten himself.
In his non-identical twin Report(s) he gives the impression that Druitt -- whether a minor or a major suspect -- snugly fit the 'awful glut' criteria of a killer unable to function because he killed himself [instantly] after the Miller's Ct. horror-show.
He did this to square the circle that Druitt was a suspect whom the police knew about at the time or very soon after he took his own life.
In Sims the image of the police is enhanced even further regarding the 'investigation' into this super-suspect.
Now the 'police' strongly suspect the 'doctor' before he takes his fateful plunge after the final atrocity. In fact, the police were trying to find him to arrest him as the fiend.
Thus his suicide becomes confirmation for their professional belief in his culpability.
The implication is that the physicians of the 'mad doctor', when he has been periodically sectioned, have contacted Scotland Yard to convey their worst fears about a patient who 'confessed' to a compulsion to savage harlots. This allowed them to narrow their suspect list from seven, to three, and now to one.
By the time the 'friends' of the missing medico also contact police with their dire suspicions, the police -- so Sims tells it -- already know all about their insane pal and have issued, too late as it turns out, an arrest warrant. Sims writes that the killer could not have appeared normal for even 'a single day' and so would have died by his own hand or been immediately institutionalised -- again.
In his memoirs, Macnaghten came [mostly] clean about both of these mythologically incriminating timings.
While he still adhered to the 'awful glut' theory, the murderer did not kill himself instantly -- it was after a single day, perhaps longer.
Nor were the police (eg. Anderson) searching for him whilst alive.
Nor was it the timing of his suicide which brought him to police attention. It was information received 'some years after'; information that he was Jack the Ripper.
Who did this bombshell come from?
Macnaghten had to veil this somewhat but again the implication is that 'his own people' noticed he was 'absented' when he should not have been (the hunt by the older brother after Montie vanished from his places of work and living).
Until that information arrived, Mylett, and/or McKenzie, and especially Coles had police adherents regarding those poor victims being murders by Jack.
The real Ripper investigation by the police was long and disappointing.
Therefore, to learn in about 1891 this 'secret', that a young, English barrister who took his own life in late 1888 was the likely fiend, was all very unwelcome. It would mean the police had been chasing a ghost now laid to rest by posthumously learning of his dual identity -- the very title of Mac's memoir chapter.
A convenient suicide would have been one after the Coles murder, not two years before.
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