Druitt and the Home office

[Smoking Joe]

Could anyone explain to me why Druitt's suicide ,and the details surrounding the event ,needed to be reported to the Home Office?Im assuming Abberlines statement to that effect meant that the report was sent soon after the event,and not several years later, when its assumed that suspicions FIRST began to centre around MJD.
Doesnt the report in itself ,maybe suggest that Druitt was a suspect,however briefly,much earlier than commonly suggested?

[Cogidubnus]

Puzzled

Hi Joe

I thought the assertion by the BBC chap (Paul Bonner?) who saw the now missing suspects files back in the 1970s, was that there was no mention in either the Scotland Yard or Home Office Files of any of the three suspects named by Sir Melville...Druitt included...or am I missing something?

All the best

Dave

[Jonathan H]

In my opinion, and inspired by suggestions made in the A to Z, Abberline is talking about the insane John Sander who was, however briefly, 1. a Ripper suspect in 1888, and 2. who was the subject of a Home Office Report, and 3. was a medical student.

None of those three bits of data match Druitt, but do match Sanders whom the police could not find due to a having the addressw rong. Therefoire he may have recalled Sanders 'vanishing', and thinks that the press (actually George Sims) has some version of that tale.

That Abberline is clueless about Druitt is obvious as the latter was not a auspect in 1888, or for some years, was not a medical student and was not the subject of a Home Office Report (though Macnaghten lied to Sims that Druitt was the star of such a report on the Ripper case, as he had written it).

It is a measure of how much Abberline was out of the loop about Druitt, and 'Kosminski' for that matter -- he was not alone -- that he tells the reporter in 1903 that he going to contact Macnaghten, by then assistant Commissioner, to inform him of his Chapman theory, oblivious that the 'drowned docotr' originates with Mac.

So who is this 'we' in 'we never believed ...'?

Abblerine also contradicts himself, at one point saying that it was only the timing of the young doctor's suicide which brought him to police attention -- which assuned that they knew Kelly was the final victim and they did not -- and then saying that patrols were still maintained fatre his body was recovered.

[Smoking Joe]

Ive tried to post reply of 4-5 paragraphs THREE times.Each time Ive finished and press post button ,Im told Im not logged in. Ill try again some other time

[mklhawley]

Hi Smoking Joe,

Logging in should allow everything to be posted, but if not, sometimes I will write a post on Microsoft Word and then copy/paste it so that I'm only logged on for moments.

Sincerely,
Mike

[Smoking Joe]

[QUOTE=Jonathan H;260387]In my opinion, and inspired by suggestions made in the A to Z, Abberline is talking about the insane John Sander who was, however briefly, 1. a Ripper suspect in 1888, and 2. who was the subject of a Home Office Report, and 3. was a medical student.

None of those three bits of data match Druitt, but do match Sanders whom .

Well, Jonathan, surely No 1+2 could have applied to Druitt If Abberline's comments were regarding him. No 3 ,could also have applied to Druitt ,if we allow Abberline a little "wriggle room" to make an error.i.eThe Druitt Family's Medical connections. Plus of course Sander was never fished out of the Thames .....or was he?
It seems ,at least in my opinion,that its almost certain that Druitt was the person Abberline was referring to, not Sander ,and I thought that was generally accepted. Perhaps Im wrong.
Abberline said( Im paraphrasing here) " After last murder-body of young doctor found in thames-nothing beyond that to incriminate him" If there was mno other evidence to incriminate him ,then why the report? Abberline then continues "but that it (evidence) was final and conclusive is beyond the truth" So it seems there was some evidence,however circumstancial and inconclusive,which would lead at least to SOME suspicions against Druitt being present?
Thanks for replying by the way.

[Smoking Joe]

Hi Smoking Joe,

Logging in should allow everything to be posted, but if not, sometimes I will write a post on Microsoft Word and then copy/paste it so that I'm only logged on for moments.

Sincerely,
Mike

Thanks MKL ..Success!

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

The Home Office report on Druitt was hokum.

George R. Sims [Dagonet] and retired Chief Inspector Abberline both misinterpreted the redacted section of the Macnaghten Memorandum first published by Major Griffiths in November 1898.

Regards,

Simon

[Smoking Joe]

Simon,
Theres no doubt of that?
So does it follow that Abberline was speaking of something he really knew nothing of?Thats a good part of my argument gone west by the sound of it.But thanks for that piece of information, Ive never heard that statement of Abberlines refuted before.
many thanks

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

Retired Chief Inspector Abberline, Pall Mall Gazette, 31st March 1903—

"I know all about that story. But what does it amount to? Simply this. Soon after the last murder in Whitechapel the body of a young doctor was found in the Thames, but there is absolutely nothing beyond the fact that he was found at that time to incriminate him. A report was made to the Home Office about the matter, but that it was 'considered final and conclusive' is going altogether beyond the truth."

George R. Sims, 5th April 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. I am betraying no confidence in making this statement, because it has been published by an official who had an opportunity of seeing the Home Office Report, Major Arthur Griffiths, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of prisons."

In his 1898 book "Mysteries of Crime and Police" Major Arthur Griffiths had reproduced a redacted [no names] version of the Macnaghten Memorandum.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Simon.

But I don't think Grffiths and Sims 'misinterpreted' the memo --the 'Aberconway version, by the way, not the filed one, wherein Druitt is nearly nothing -- rather I think that they were misled, eg. deceived by Mac into believeing that this was it -- the definitive report.

It is, therefore, Sims' trump card against Abberline, or so he thinks, that the 'Commissioner' has written a definitve 'Report for the Home Office' and that what the ex-detective is saying is rubbish.

A huge and rather arrogant, even ludicrous call to make against a distinguished police officer who had actually worked the case.

But backed by Mac, the head of CID by then, Sims makes it.

To Smoking Joe

I stand by what I wrote:

John Sanders was a medical student, tick, was the subject of a Home Office Report, tick, and was a suspect in 1888, tick.

None of those thee bits of data match Druitt. Other bits match Druitt, but those come from the newspapers Abberline was reading. There is no evdience here of indepdent knoweldge on his part and a lot to suggest he has none.

I think that Abberline was totally out of the loop about Druitt, an entirely posthumous suspect who first came to Mac's attention no earlier than Feb 1891, but he could not say such a thing because it would undermine his definitive claims about Chapman to that reporter.

Yet Abberline gets himself into a terrible muddle, claiming that it was only the timing of the suicide after the last victim which was incriminating.

The myth that Kelly was known to be the final victim at the time is a Druitt-centric notion which was not consolidated until 1898; it is not a contemporaneous notion of the police. Plus his memory kicks in and he talks about patrols just after the Kelly murder still going, which is correct.

We can actually see his authentic memory fighting with Mac's much later propaganda.

To be blunt Abberline does not know what he is talking about but thinks he does, because these so-called suspects -- drowned doctor, lockced-up lunatic -- are just, he thinks, press fancies, not realising that the former is the top suspect of the current Assistant Commissioner and the latter of a previous one (Anderson).

[Smoking Joe]

Hi jonathan,
Sanders may well have been a medical student, may well have been an 1888 suspect,and equally well have been the subject of a Home O ffice report. Unfortunately he wasnt fished out of the Thames ,and Abberline expressly stated that the man he spoke of was.
Its ok to speculate upon Abberlines sanity ,and suggest that he didnt have a clue what was going on,who committed suicide and who didnt, whom was whom,or what was what. The exact same has been said about Macnaughton also,so where does that lead us? But to suggest that the only information Abberline had was that which he gleaned from reading the daily newspapers seems a tiny bit fanciful.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

Maybe Abberline had also read Major Griffiths' book and come to the same conclusions as Sims.

After all, by 1903 he'd been out of the Scotland Yard loop for eleven years.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Simon

I don't think he read it in Griffiths because he would have respected that source. He mentions the press.

But he had been out of the lopp for years and years and of course boasts that he is not and that 'we' never believed such tales -- touchingly oblivious that Mac is the origin of those tales in the press.

To Smoking Joe

I can't get this point across, but I will try again.

Abberline mentions four things about the drowned suspect, three of which matches Sanders and not Druitt. And Sanders seemed to have vanished in 1888, and he may have thought this was the resolution to that mystery: a Thames drowning.

I was not suggesting that Abberline was 'insane', just getting carried away because he had to quash every other suspect to make Chapman as persuasive as possible eg. no loose ends, Chapman is the one and the only one.

Ironically by confirming that there was a 'Home Office Report' about the drowned suspect, Abberline inadvertently played into Macnaghten's hands -- via Sims -- as there is no such thing about Druitt, as Mac was hustling Griffiths and Sims into believing.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

Let's not forget that the PMG article was Abberline's valedictory statement on the Ripper.

Whilst in Bournemouth retirement he didn't want anyone beating a path to his door.

And it worked.

The next anyone heard of him was in 1929, when he died.

Regards,

Simon