Druitt and the Home office

[Roy Corduroy]

Joe, there are three words that crop up again and again back then when people talked about suspects.

1. doctor
2. asylum
3. suicide

The use of any one, two or all of them was considered to make it mo better.

Roy

[robhouse]

Joe, there are three words that crop up again and again back then when people talked about suspects.

1. doctor
2. asylum
3. suicide

The use of any one, two or all of them was considered to make it mo better.

Roy

That's a good point... and I would add another word to the list: Broadmoor.

[Jonathan H]

To Roy

Not really.

It's just Druitt, and he wasn't a doctor, and Abberline talking about his 'medical student' whom if he means John Sanders did not kill himself.

There are early rumours linking medical training with being put in an asylum and then expiring, but not killing themselves.

There is no doctor element involved with 'Kosminski', the fictional variant of Aaron Kosminski, except I suppose his own doctors, and nor is there suicide.

'Kosminski' died from his mania for masturbation while 'safely caged', after being on the prowl for 'mere weeks'.

Dr Tumblety, according to what perhaps somebody told Jack Littlechild, was 'believed' to have taken his own life -- but there is no asylum element.

On the other hand, Mac apparently told Tom Divall that the murderer fled to the States and died there in an asylum -- which does not have the suicide element but it's closing on it.

Another theme is that the police were watching a susepct almost certainly the killer but could not quite make an arrest. Yet watching Jack prevented murders until he died or was sectioned, or they never stopped watching.

[Roy Corduroy]

Oh, OK.

I said any one of those. Or two. Or all three. Doctor, asylum, suicide.

In the meantime though, I've been doing some more thinking about Macnaghten writing his memorandum.

As I said, the very same week in February 1894 the Sun articles appeared in print, there was a big story in London - an anarchist died when he blew himself up with his own bomb at Royal Observatory Park Greenwich. And the Metropolitan Police then raided the Autonomie Club.

This was a big story. I saw online the archive of the Royal Observatory has clippings from a dozen or so London newpapers about it that week. I can see a big headline in the New York Times about this too.

Back to the Sun articles, which Macnaghten was writing in response to -I have asked people if there was any reaction in the other newspapers in London or the UK to the Sun articles. I didn't hear anything. In other words, other papers writing about those articles. Comments, criticisms, any kind of feedback, but I didn't hear of it. There were some short articles in Australia because they recognized Tom T Cutbush, the father, who was a colonist there. But there was no big wave of comment about the Sun articles in the press. Unless someone knows of it.

I have a idea -Melville Macnaghten was not specifically asked to write his memorandum. He simply did it on his own. And seeing the big story unfold about the anarchist that week, he may have had a hunch that the Sun articles weren't going to have legs. But he set his thoughts down on paper anyway. A draft version, then a slightly different version which he penned on Scotland Yard stationery.

As we have noticed, there are no initials, additional dates, or any other marks on the Scotland Yard memo. It simply was filed away at some point.

So I think he did this on his own. Becuase he was conversant with the facts of the case, and also had developed his own ideas and theory of it.

Roy

[Simon Wood]

Hi Roy,

Good point. An anarchist explosion at Greenwich would certainly have taken the gilt off the Ripper gingerbread.

The only question I would ask is why, if MM was conversant with the facts of the case, he had to develop his own ideas and theory, and in doing so make so many factual blunders.

Regards,

Simon

[Mayerling]

Hi Simon,

I don't see any real mystery about that at all. Every now and then we have to take a moment to organize (or begin to organize) our thoughts. Cutbush was on Macnaughten's immediate concerns that week, when Martial Bourdin's conveniently stupid plot at Greenwich changed people's attentions. Sir Melville was probably starting to organize a comment if really required on Cutbush about other suspects, and basing this on his somewhat hazier memory (in 1894) of things he heard in earlier years at the Yard. He writes these down, and later will improve what he writes or seemingly correct it.

Whether or not he was on the correct track with Druitt, Kosminski, or Ostrog, what still bugs me is why he did not think of killing the entire issue on Cutbush or any other future suspect by pinpointing attention to three unsavory types of suspects that rumors had drifted about earlier: Bury, Deeming, and Cream (although Cream was definitely in prison in America in 1888). The point is if he had done so, and all three suspects were safely hanged by 1894, the public would have felt that the Ripper had paid for his crimes. Obviously Macnaughten felt that there were too many other voices from the police or elsewhere who would push another suspect (as Fred Abberline would push Chapman in 1903) to guard against it. So Macnaughter might have felt constrained to look at other people. So far of his three Montie seems to be the one who (despite a lack of solid evidence) still seems the best bet.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

There are no errors in the Mac Report(s) if you define them as information or data the author did not know was inaccurate.

To Roy

Yes, mate, I have been arguing that for several years.

Nobody asked Mac to write the official version of the Report, which I believe came first, and then -- unneeded and unsent to the Home Office -- he quietly archived it. A document unknown to anybody else at the Yard. Nonetheless, Mac committed to file that M. J. Druitt might not have been a doctor but was definitely a sexual fiend.

Then in 1898 Mac took it out and rewrote it for dissemination by Griffiths and then Sims (whether they actually saw it just had its contents communicated verbally to them) with himself and the Druitt family swapping places as to who was certain of Montie's guilt, while the chief suspect becomes Henry Jekyll. 'Kosminski' and Ostrog were also sexed-up (the former got a beat cop witness and the latter got to carry surgical knives). Druitt becomes the paramount suspect, and the 'new' version was deceitfully described to the pals as a definitive document of state (Sims, 1903).

To Jeff

Good question?!

Why not list Pizer, or Sanders, or Tumblety, or Sadler (as Jack) and so on?

In my opinion Druitt was all that mattered to him. but he did not want to give the impression to the Liberal Government that they were too late to catch him -- which they were, by years -- and so he elevated minor suspects to provide a crowd of deviants supposedly left ga ga [maybe] by the 'awful glut' at Miller's Ct. The middle-aged, English doctor killed himself so ... he must be the likeliest. Aaron Kosminski was neither dead nor sectioned soon after Kelly, while by late 1894 Ostrog was cleared.

Since their profiles were to be semi-fictionalized, and their names with-held from the public, it did not matter.

And in a shameless bit of cheek, Mac had made Cutbush and Cutbush related -- practically de-facto father and son -- knowing it was balderdash, a lie, a 'Hail Mary' pass he never made at SY or the HO as the Report was never sent.

[Smoking Joe]

Why do so many (or so it seems) hold the firm opinion that Druitt not only wasnt a suspect (minor or wotherwise) at the end of 1888 ,but Couldnt have been?
Why couldnt the phrase (police looking for him alive ,when he was found dead) be correct?Why does that phrase HAVE to be an invention? Why couldnt Macnaughton's list of suspects be a list of contemporary suspects?Alist which in Macnaughton's mind pushed Druitt'sname to the top because of info (according to Macnaughton) that had surfaced a few years later which added to what might have been suspected much earlier "clinched"it
As the police files were ,some may say,carelessly disposed of,or lost during the blitz,or, as others might say cherry picked perhaps,surely its no great surprise that no written contemporary evidence survives implicating Druitt. Maybe someone might explain to this poor wretch?
regards

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

"There are no errors in the Mac Report(s) if you define them as information or data the author did not know was inaccurate."

You must have had your tongue firmly in your cheek when you wrote that.

Regards,

Simon

[Mayerling]

To Jeff

Good question?!

Why not list Pizer, or Sanders, or Tumblety, or Sadler (as Jack) and so on?

In my opinion Druitt was all that mattered to him. but he did not want to give the impression to the Liberal Government that they were too late to catch him -- which they were, by years -- and so he elevated minor suspects to provide a crowd of deviants supposedly left ga ga [maybe] by the 'awful glut' at Miller's Ct. The middle-aged, English doctor killed himself so ... he must be the likeliest. Aaron Kosminski was neither dead nor sectioned soon after Kelly, while by late 1894 Ostrog was cleared.

Since their profiles were to be semi-fictionalized, and their names with-held from the public, it did not matter.

And in a shameless bit of cheek, Mac had made Cutbush and Cutbush related -- practically de-facto father and son -- knowing it was balderdash, a lie, a 'Hail Mary' pass he never made at SY or the HO as the Report was never sent.

Hi Jonathan,

You are right - Mac could have pointed to those you named. My idea was that (if Mac really wanted to silence public mutterings about police failure) all he would have to do is name as "suspects" three or more who were now conveniently hanged for crimes brought home to them. I just selected three of the four (with Chapman) who were hanged within four years of the crimes (with Chapman being hanged fifteen years after the Whitechapel Murders).
Mac could have named (for that matter), Mary Pearcey (whose work was briefly suspected of being the Ripper's), Police Constable George Cook (executed in 1893 for killing his ex-girlfriend, a prostitute he tried to reform who turned nasty on him when he tried to break with her), and Richard Davies (one of two brothers who murdererd their bullying creep of a father who beat up on their mother; Richard's brother was 17, and he was 19 - his brother got life imprisonment as a minor, but Richard - despite public outcry about the circumstances in the case - was hanged). The only people Mac would not have named would have been Dr. Gull and the Duke of Clarence (the latter in particular).

By the way, has anyone noticed how clumsy and oafish a Home Secretary Mathews was? Everyone concentrates on one of two events in his services of five years in the office (1887-1892), but there were more:

1887- Expose of police corruption allegations in London; Arrest of Miss Cass for being a prostitute (she wasn't); Trafalgar Square riots (handled too roughly); Israel Lipski reprieve fiasco; heavy involvement in "Parnellism and Crime" parliamentary investigation (see 1889).

1888 - Regent's Park gang war leads to killing of innocent bystander; Whitechapel Murders and resignation of Warren.

1889 - Maybrick Poisoning Affair (mental health of Justice Stephen brushed under the table - Florence conviction upheld! and she is given a reprieve); Pigott forgeries (supported by Scotland Yard) blow up at parliamentary investigation of "Parnellism and Crime"; mishandling of "Cleveland Street" Sodomy Case, and prosecution of editor Parkes.

1890 - Davies Murder case (see above).

1891-92 - Belated discovery of bodies of Maria Deeming and her four children in early 1892, only after word from Melbourne that Fred Deeming had murdered his second wife and buried her body in the house - Maria and the children had last been seen in Rainhill near Liverpool in summer of 1891; Similarly botched discovery of the murderer of four prostitutes (first pair considered natural deaths) despite suspicious letters of blackmail to prominent persons - Finally investigation works after last two victims poisoned together in April 1892, and leads to Dr. Thomas Neill Cream.

I don't think I can remember any other Home Secretary at the center of so many botched cases. Lord Salisbury really must have been desperate when he put Mathews in his cabinet.

Jeff

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jeff,

If the Macnaghten Memorandum had ever seen the light of official day [i.e. left his desk drawer and passed up the hierarchical chain of command], do you not think that, no matter who he named, at some point he would have been asked to provide some sort of evidence to substantiate his assertions?

Regards,

Simon

[Mayerling]

Hi Simon,

There you have me. Presumably Mac would have had something tangible to show his superiors to back his three choices. Don't forget - he could have laid his hands on those files that are now so inconveniently missing to us. That does not mean they would have bought his three choices, even with the files, but they would have considered that he laid the matter to some form of rest. And don't forget - the reason that he would have been presenting the memo and supporting file items to his superiors at the time would have been to help settle the "Cutbush" matter, which they too would have wanted to squelch. Mac's memorandum would have been like manna from heaven to them.

Jeff

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jeff,

If Macnaghten's Memorandum ever left his desk drawer, then by 9th October 1894 somebody at the Home Office must have smelled a rat. For on that date they wrote to The Secretary to the Treasury, requesting that Michael Ostrog be paid £10 compensation for false imprisonment for theft, he having established to their satisfaction that at the time he was in prison in France and also throughout the preceding months of the Whitechapel murders.

Whoops!

Regards,

Simon

[Mayerling]

Hi Simon,

Whoops indeed! But as that would have been months away, the memo would have been perused earlier. And the false arrest matter might not have ended so quickly for Ostrog. Don't forget the Cutbush connection to the memo was in February 1894. Moreover, just as the Cutbush affair was buried by the Greenwich Observatory outrage (in public attention) similarly before Ostrog's release England had been preoccupied (in the months of June and July 1894) with the Prittlewell murder of Florence Dennis, and the ensuing search for (and apprehension of) James Canham Read. Read's trial would take place in November 1894 (he'd be convicted and hanged). Somehow that matter would have had a higher priority than keeping tracks on Ostrog - who one would only have been aware of if the memo had been sent earlier in the year!

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

Thanks, I knew you would agree with me. They are not 'errors' if they are deliberate attempts to fudge.

To Jeff

We must never lose sight of the fact that Mac mothballed the official version of his Report, and then later disseminated an alternate version to the public via cronies he could control.

Therefore, Druitt as a Ripper suspect never passed through any kind of ofiicial chain.

Since Mac wrote two very different versions of the same Report we do not know that if push had come to shove in 1894, over Cutbush, he would not have composed a third version for Asquith.

In a sense we can see him doing this with 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' in 1914; a third version, different again, and this time not bothering with non-suspects such as the Polish Jew, the Russian doctor (and the American weirdo) and conceding what the first two versions did not -- Druitt was an entirely posthumous suspect.

To Smoking Joe

The primary sources show that between 1888 and early 1891, Druitt as Jack was known only to a few, and this circle did not include the police.

From early 1891 a compelling argument can now be made, from newly discoeverd primary osurces, that the secret leaked out of Dorset and Macnaghten investigated but seems to have kept this secret to himself, institutionally speaking (there was, after all, nobody to arrest).

One of the mordern breakthroughs missed by earlier writes is that Macnaghten manipulated his mouthpieces into accepting (Sims much more so than Griffiths) that the 'mad doctor' was a Super-suspect in 1888, in fact about to be arrested. The police practically pushed him into the river.

This is rubbish, because the police did not act in any way as if the case was closed at the beginning of 1889.

It is pure propaganda starting in 1898; a meme that, nevertheless, became absorbed, to varying degrees, into the fading memories of Abberline and Anderson and maybe Swanson and Littlechild -- but not Mac or Reid.

It is propaganda rather than a memory lapse because Mac admitted in his memoirs that 'certain facts' leading to a 'conclusion' did not arrive until 'some years after' the killer killed himself.