Druitt and the Home office

[Jonathan H]

Not much of a statement, except exposing his colossal ignornace of the competing resolution of the case -- which was not his fault.

Then again, maybe he did write to Macnaghten?

If he wrote about that load of rubbish about the drownedd suspect, one can only imagine affable Mac's slef=amused smile as he read that ...

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

I'm wondering if, during the last two weeks of his life, George Chapman [Severin Klosowski] read in the Pall Mall Gazette that ex-Chief Inspector Abberline had fingered him as Jack the Ripper.

Regards,

Simon

[DVV]

Hi Simon

Probably somebody told him.

[Simon Wood]

Hi DVV,

Same difference.

Chapman might have been able to parlay Abberline's nonsensical theory to his advantage.

But if he did try, it obviously didn't work.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

Good point, Simon.

Did somebody in authority, at the Home Office, ask Mac's opinion at CID about Chapman?

Because they sure had no report in their files about this Dr Jekyll suspect.

Did Mac do a verbal dodge? eg. We have several suspects much, much better than Chapman, for example Thomas Cutbush ...

[Smoking Joe]

Well I guess I made the mistake of reading the words Abberline spoke, rather than trying to read "underneath" them or "through" them.I have an open mind ,but I find that the supposed "smoke and mirrors" approach accorded to Macnaughton,Sims, Spectral vicars,and suchlike pretty speculative to say the least. Ive read your theory Jonathan and no doubt you have worked hard at it,you deserve credit for that.But at the same timeit depends too much on what you think Macnaughton might have done-could have done -and his reasons for so doing.Likewise the "confession" i.e whether it was a genuine vicar or a hack writer, whether it even related to Druitt .And the term "truth in fictional form" leaves ample opportunity for anyone to draw whatever "truths" they wish to from it.
Having said all that ,Im quite aware that probabley most here are more informed than I.As for Abberlines statement being a statement about Sanders and not Druitt, and Sanders "ticking the boxes " in 3 out of 4 points,the point about drowning in the Thames wasnt "ticked".And I feel point 4 is the most important in identifying who he was talking about.
But I guess,as in the famous song "3 out of 4 aint bad",its better than nothing. Ascribing reasons why Abberline made that statement,i.e "wanted to quash every suspect but chapman" "colossal ignorance of the case" "playing into the hands of Macnaughton" etc is pretty wild conjecture in my opinion.
No home office report on Druitt? maybe not,but in light of the number of files missing, and all these machiavellian schemes in progress ,its probabley no surprise.......

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

George R. Sims, 29th March 1903—

"Jack the Ripper committed suicide after his last murder - a murder so maniacal that it was accepted at once as the deed of a furious madman. It is perfectly well known at Scotland Yard who "Jack" was, and the reasons for the police conclusions were given in the report to the Home Office, which was considered by the authorities to be final and conclusive."

Abberline, 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-

"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."

Were they referencing the same "Home Office" report?

Welcome to Ripperland, where you pays your money and you takes your chances.

Regards,

Simon

[Smoking Joe]

Hello Simon,
maybe its a case of which came first the chicken or the egg?
Maybe Abberline did" know all about this story " at the time it took place and not merely after reading Sims.Maybe he didnt,But if it was Sanders he meant,he would have known that Sanders wasnt the "dead wringer" brought up from the bottom of the Thames.
Yes maybe he was confused, maybe he was ignorant,but maybe he wasnt,I plainly dont know.
Yes yer pays yer money and yer takes yer chances .I at least agree with that.:
regards

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

George R. Sims was quoting Major Griffiths who in November 1898 published a redacted [no names] version of the Macnaghten Memorandum, and appears to have been given to believe that Griffiths' source was a "Home Office" report.

Abberline appears to have denounced the same "Home Office" report in favour of his George Chapman theory.

If not Griffiths's book, from where else could Abberline have learned about the drowned "doctor", an error made by both men?

Regards,

Simon

[Mayerling]

Hi DVV,

Same difference.

Chapman might have been able to parlay Abberline's nonsensical theory to his advantage.

But if he did try, it obviously didn't work.

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon,

It is equally possible that if someone brought this story to Chapman's attention he would have just felt totally fed up. Facing execution he'd suddenly is being fingered as the worst uncaught murderer of the Victorian Age, and if he had been brought in for questioning by Inspector Abberline in 1888 (guilty or not guilty) he would have been feeling like a return to past nonsense he thought was long buried.

Jeff

[Smoking Joe]

Hi Simon,
Mcnaughton didnt say Druitt was a doctor.He wrote "said to be a doctor".The question is said to be a doctor by whom? Abberline? Griffiths et al,or maybe his potential victims?What exactly is the meaning of the phrase?Nobody seems to know. Is that how he(Druitt) maybe presented himself in certain situations,the same way as Christie presented himself as a man with medical experience? Perhaps,in that case, The word doctor is an excusable error ,and not necessarily the words of one who is repeating what he has read elsewhere.That of course is speculation, the very thing Im arguing arguing against so.....
Abberline was on the spot at the time,Macnaughton wasnt ,maybe Abberlines thoughts are more valuable ..now if you said that it has been ascertained beyond any doubt whatsoever that there was no H.O report On Druitt,which obviously isnt the same as saying one hasnt been located,then that would be different.
Thanks
P.s bear in mind my interest in the case only stretches back at most 3 years,and its not an overwhelming obsession,so of course things that are clear to lifelong students of the case,might not be as clear to me.
regards

[Simon Wood]

Hi Smoking Joe,

Good questions.

I'd go so far as to say there never was a "Home Office" report on Druitt, or anyone else for that matter.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

In the version of his Report which Macnaghten showed, or verablly communicated, to Griffiths and then Sims, Druitt is definitely a middle-aged doctor.

Whereas in the official version, which they did not see, Druitt only might, or might not have been a doctor -- and he wasn't.

In 1898 either Mac or Griffiths, or both, discreetly hid the Druitt family by turning them into the anomic 'friends' (again arguably showing Mac's intimate knowledge of this suspect as William Druitt heard from a 'friend' that his sibling was missing in London, and in the very first 1889 press account of the body's recovery it is mistakenly asserted that 'friends' in Bournemouth have been contacted) and so we can see that, as with the Vicar of 1899, data is being ficitonalsied to protect people.

Unlike the Vicar it is being done covertly.

I argue that Mac had already begun this process of fictionalisation by turning Druitt into Jekyll.

Leave aside Sanders for a moment.

Abberline simply gets things wrong about Druitt, who was not really the subject of a Home Office Report, was not suspected at the tme of the Kelly murder, and was not a surgeon-- but was the chief suspect of Mac by then Assistant Comm. and yet Abberline is woefully ignorant of that too.

He is relying on what's in the press.

Of course there is a possibility that sinse Mac seems to have combined Druitt, Tumblety and 'Kosminski' for Tom Divall, and combined Tumblety and Druitt perhaps for a perplexed Abberline, he did the same with Sanders and Druitt to explain away the whereabouts of the 3rd missing medical student.

Whatever, it leaves Abberline looking very igmorant about all these machinations, which is not his fault but his presumptuous 'we never belived ...' does not hold up re: Macnaghten and nor Anderson (and arguably Swanson).

In other words, its just empty bragging needed at that moment to convince that there is only one suspect: Chapman.

The difference with Mac's so-called errors about Druitt is that in a subsequent document by the same source, his 1914 memoir, he arguably corrected those self-serving mistakes (while in the unknown internal Report of 1894, in SY's archive, he carefully shied away from Druitt as a Jekyll figure).

Simon, I believe you are quite wrong about Sims' source of information.

Sure he had Griffiths, but, over the years, he had Mac in his ear too.

We know this because Sims, unlike Griffiths, has extra information about the 'mad doctor' which is not in 'Aberconway' and not in Griffiths.

One being that the 'friends' were frantically tryingt o find their missing pal. This is a veiled version of Willaim druitt's hunt, further textual evdience that Mac knew all about this suspect (as this information could not have been in Moulson's Report).

This detail is not in 'Aberconway' and not in Griffiths.

The other new element being that the 'doctor' had been in an insane asylum -- maybe twice -- where he was diagnosed as a homicidal maniac with a fixation on savaging harlots. He should never have been let out, says Sims.

This also means that the doctor had made a pre-Whitechapel confession: culpability comes from his own lips.

Furthermore it meant that the doctor did not work as a doctor, and had not for years. Another element introduced here is that he was so rich he did not need to work. He did nothing but ride around on bussea and trains (eg. he did not play sport).

Thus the profile spins the story far away from the real Druitt.

Coincidence?

When we know that family was altered to become friends?

Of course in RipperLand this all counts for nothing.

In 1910, Sims disparages Anderson and his Jewish suspect and mentions that the allegedly definitive 'Home Office Report' mentions that the doctor has been in a lunatic asylum.

He's wrong, or rather been misled.

The 'Aberconway' version, albeit Mac's daughter's copy, does not mention this at all (or that Dr Druitt is so wealthy, and a recluse).

Whom else could it have come from except Sims' close friend, Mac, since it is patent fiction about the hard-working, sociable, middle-class Montague Druitt?

And of course it's not a copy of a 'Home Office Report' at all.

Druitt -- unlike the medical student Sanders -- was never the subject of such a report re: Jack the Ripper in 1888, or ever.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

I don't believe Sims had Macnaghten's ear prior to 1898.

He didn't promote the drowned doctor until January 1899, two months after the publication of Major Griffiths' book.

I don't know when Sims became a guest at Macnaghten's Monday night Corinthian dinners.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

I agree, Sims was activated by Mac only in 1898/9.

Until then Sims thought that the police had never identified Jack, just as he had written up until 1894.

Then Mac had to both reveal the Druitt solution and mislead him: that the police had identified the Ripper in 1888 and it was a secret of state, but it was ok now to share with tis the public -- minus the name of course (Griffiths was far less concvined about how definitive this scoop was and never referred to the 'Home Office Report'.)

The 'mad doctor' would not be named, he had no family of his own, his pals already knew the awful truth -- amd am extra bonus, in terms of upsetting people, he had not had patients for years and years.

The police were about to arrest Jekyll, and so all that criticism in 1888was unjust, or so Sims now implied.

Everybody's a winner.

Except the 'North Country Vicar', the object of Sims' 1899 return to the mystery, the former rudely and inaccurately quashed by Sims because the real Jack did not have the mental capacity, or the time, or the opportunity to confess to a clergyman as he could do nothing but stagger to a river a 'shrieking, raving fiend' (the Vicar's Jack matches the real Druitt and not Sims' fictional variant).

In 1890, Sims already has pics of Kelly presumably from Mac.