Abberline and Druitt

[Robert]

Interesting, though, that MP Farquharson made two serious allegations - one, against his election opponent Gatty, and the other against (supposedly) Druitt. Gatty's father was a north country vicar.

[Lechmere]

Jonathan

On 24th March 1903 the Pall Mall Gazette reported that Abberline had intended to write to Macnaghten suggesting that Chapman may be the Ripper. In the interview Abberline confided:

‘you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind.’

This prompted Sims to write (in the Referee I believe):

‘I was rather surprised to find high-class newspapers suggesting Chapman as 'Jack the Ripper."
"Jack" was a homicidal maniac. Each crime that he committed was marked with greater ferocity during the progress of his insanity. How could a man in the mental condition of "Jack" have suddenly settled down into a cool, calculating poisoner?
‘"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 know 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.
‘How the ex-Inspector can say "We never believed 'Jack' was dead or a lunatic" in face of the report made by the Commissioner of Police is a mystery to me. It is a curious coincidence, however, that for a long time a Russian Pole resident in Whitechapel was suspected at the Yard. But his name was not Klosowski! The genuine "Jack" was a doctor. His body was found in the Thames on December 31, 1888.’

So Sims claims that a report by the Commissioner about the identity of the Ripper were sent to the Home Office. He says the police also suspected a Russian Pole at one time (clearly a reference to Kosminski).
What report do you think he might have been referring to?
Sims also says that the ‘doctor’s’ body was found in the Thames.

To this Abberline replied on 31st March, again in the Pall Mall Gazette:

"You can state most emphatically," said Mr. Abberline, "that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago. It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead. I am, and always have been, in the closest touch with Scotland Yard, and it would have been next to impossible for me not to have known all about it. Besides, the authorities would have been only too glad to make an end of such a mystery, if only for their own credit."
To convince those who have any doubts on the point, Mr. Abberline produced recent documentary evidence which put the ignorance of Scotland Yard as to the perpetrator beyond the shadow of a doubt.
"I know," continued the well-known detective, "that it has been stated in several quarters that 'Jack the Ripper' was a man who died in a lunatic asylum a few years ago, but there is nothing at all of a tangible nature to support such a theory.
Our representative called Mr. Abberline's attention to a statement made in a well-known Sunday paper, in which it was made out that the author was a young medical student who was found drowned in the Thames.
"Yes," said Mr. Abberline, "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. Seeing that the same kind of murders began in America afterwards, there is much more reason to think the man emigrated. Then again, the fact that several months after December, 1888, when the student's body was found, the detectives were told still to hold themselves in readiness for further investigations seems to point to the conclusion that Scotland Yard did not in any way consider the evidence as final."

Abberline is referring directly back to the Sims story.
There can be no doubt that Abberline was referring to Druitt and not anyone else.
Abberline mentions the Jewish suspect who died in an asylum (Kosminski).
Abberline refers to a Home Office Report, which I would suggest is a reference to the Macnaghten Memorandum which also mentions Kosminski.
He refers to a young Doctor. Druitt is always referred to as a doctor (or at least son of a doctor). Druitt is referred to as a doctor in the Macnaghten Memorandum which Abberline shows knowledge of.
So is Abberline out of step with what the police thought they knew?
By then Abberline had retired and was going on what his contacts told him.

The first oblique reference we get to Druitt was by Henry Farquharson MP was in The Bristol Times and Mirror on 11th February 1891:

‘a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania.’

Farquharson was ‘exposed’ as the originator of this theory in an article in the Western Mail in February 1892. This article detailed ongoing police enquiries into the Ripper and implied Farquharson’s theory had no merit - echoing Abberlines’s later claim that the police made further investigations.
Interestingly soon after (in March 1892) Farquharson made libellous allegations against Charles Gatty to the effect that Gatty had been removed from Charterhouse School for an ‘offence against purity’ – in other words some sort of homosexual liaison with another boy.

There are two big holes below the waterline in your theory.
1. – So far as we can tell the Druitt theory seems to originate with Farquharson – a man who shortly afterwards lost a libel case concerning homosexual activities at a boarding school.
2. – It was not Macnaghten’s personal secret. He mentioned Druitt in his Memorandum which as intended to be seen by other eyes (and it seems other people were aware of its contents) and Abberline was well aware of the theory.

[Limehouse]

There can be no doubt that Abberline was referring to Druitt and not anyone else.

But, in two different places in that piece by Abberline, he refers to the drowned man as 'a doctor' and then as 'the student'. Druitt was neither - but John Sanders was a student doctor.

Farquharson is also wrong when he states that the man took his own life on the night of the last murder. This is rubbish as Druitt was seen fit and well after November 8th.

[Lechmere]

Limehouse
Druitt is always refer to as a Doctor.
By the terms by which Druitt was referred by the Police and in the press - Abberline was accurate. It would have been remarkable if he was the only person to refer to Druitt as a barrister.
The whole point about the inaccuracies is that they illustrate that Druitt was not a proper investigated suspect.
Abberline would have been aware of the wild accusations that originated with Farquharson as he only retired in February 1892. So he would have been aware of any investigation and how Druitt was regarded from February 1891 to February 1892 and thereafter his ex-colleagues kept him abreast of things.

Under Jonathan's cunning theory if Macnaghten says something that is inaccurate it is because he is deliberately misleading - not because he is misinformed!
I would suggest the inaccuracies simply illustrate that Druitt was not in fact a serious suspect - except in Macnaghten's mind where it matured as the realisation grew that he would never fid the real culprit.

What is there to suggest that Abberline believed Sims was talking about Sanders? Anything beyond the fact that Sanders was a medical student? Was he found in the Thames after the last Ripper murder?

[Jonathan H]

To Lechmere

I think you raise an important objection to my theory: eg. it is too-clever by half.

In the sense that it has a fall-back which can never be disproved but which is intellectually pretty dodgy.

If Mac makes a mistake, well he meant to. (sounds of maniacal chuckling).

My defense is this:

I would not even propose this theory if Macnaghten in his memoirs had written that [the un-named] Druitt was a middle-aged, unemployed doctor who killed himself within hours of the Kelly atrocity.

The reason I even came up with the 'case disguised' theory, for better or for worse, is that the 1014 memoirs were so different from what I expected and what I had been led to believe by secondary sources (Begg is a major exception).

We will have to agree to disagree about interpreting Abberline's 1903 interview, the 1891 and 1892 Farquharson articles, and the Sims pieces.

1. The 'West of England' MP articles (there are three main ones, two from 1891 and one from 1892) do not say the un-named Druitt was a doctor. Rather he is the 'son of a surgeon' which is correct.

Yes, Farquharson was found guilty of libel, but he was not wrong in his information about his opponent being asked to leave a shool due to homosexual activities (what he does that is so low, and typical of pols then and now, is to turn the victim into a 'villain'.)

These articles are so critical because they show that belief in Druitt as Jack, whether right or wrong, originated in Dorset among 'his own people'.

The 1892 source says that the MP's story is 'naturally exploded' because the police are watching the real Ripper day and night. This might be Sadler, but more likely it is not true at all. They were not watching anybody whom they were certain was the fiend. What this story does is quash the MP's tale, a tale that is then rebooted by Macnaghten in 1898 via Major Griffiths.

2. Abberline is ignorant about Druitt, though to be fair he may be mis-recalling John Sanders ( a young medical student suspect; subject of a home Office Report) and he may even have been misled by Mac himself.

But the big thing against Abberline is that he does not know that Macnaghten, the Commissioner he wants to brief about Chapman, is the anonymous source for Sims about the Drowned Doctor.

Here is what Begg theorised in 2006 (not that he agrees with my theory):

' ... that [Druitt] was dismissed as a valid suspect by a source as respected and informed as Inspector Abberline has been remarkably influential in knocking Druitt down the totem pole of suspects, but the evidence indicates that he was not aware of the evidence possessed by Macnaghten and that his conclusion was therefore invalid.

Sir Melville Macnaghten clearly states the "certain facts" pointing to the conclusion that Druitt was the murderer came to the attention of the police only some years after he joined the Metropolitan Police in June 1889. However, Abberline is clearly referring to and basing his judgement on a report made at the time the body was pulled from the Thames.'

3. The scraps left to us in the primary record suggest that Druitt was Mac's suspect alone.

There is no evidence that anybody was aware that he had written a report--the official version--that was sitting in Scotland Yard's archive, not the Home Office as Sims always insisted, that named Druitt.

Critically in that official evrsion druitt is not a doctor. He is merely 'said to be a doctor.

Think about that. How could the police not know if was registered as a medical amn or not.

Answer they couldn't. It's an awkward dodge. One that was archived never again to see the light of day until 1966.

In that report, Druitt is a minor suspect against whom there was no hard evidence. He might have been a doctor, we are not sure?

Oh ... but he was 'sexually insane' (erotically into ultra-violence) and his family, understandably' 'believed' he was Jack the Ripper.

I think now that Sims was in on it rather than Mac's dupe. This makes more sense based on the little we have

When he wrote in 1903 that the 'Commissioner' had written a definitive Report he implies that this must have been Monro, if he means 1888. Actually he can claim he meant--though written with studied sloppiness--Macnaghten as Assistant Commissioner by 1903.

[Limehouse]

Limehouse
Druitt is always refer to as a Doctor.
By the terms by which Druitt was referred by the Police and in the press - Abberline was accurate. It would have been remarkable if he was the only person to refer to Druitt as a barrister.
The whole point about the inaccuracies is that they illustrate that Druitt was not a proper investigated suspect.
Abberline would have been aware of the wild accusations that originated with Farquharson as he only retired in February 1892. So he would have been aware of any investigation and how Druitt was regarded from February 1891 to February 1892 and thereafter his ex-colleagues kept him abreast of things.

Under Jonathan's cunning theory if Macnaghten says something that is inaccurate it is because he is deliberately misleading - not because he is misinformed!
I would suggest the inaccuracies simply illustrate that Druitt was not in fact a serious suspect - except in Macnaghten's mind where it matured as the realisation grew that he would never fid the real culprit.

What is there to suggest that Abberline believed Sims was talking about Sanders? Anything beyond the fact that Sanders was a medical student? Was he found in the Thames after the last Ripper murder?

Thank you Lechmere, you have explained exactly what I was trying point out (but badly) - that Druitt was a poor suspect. He does not even come to light until several years after the last murder and his candidacy is based on speculation about his sexuality and his family's dark suspicions.

The theory that Macnaghten was trying to mislead readers over Druitt's true identity is plausible, but a little strange in its execution because we are supposed to believe that he was naming suspects who were 'better candidates than Cutbush' - whose family he was trying to protect but in doing so he names Druitt but describes him inaccurately. Why mention him at all? Even if Druitt's name was rumoured at the time, he did not have to list him as a 'better suspect than Cutbush'. he could have left him off the list.

I could be wrong, but I believe Sanders was found in the Thames but I am not sure when. Wasn't he the young man with a painted face who was chased by a crowd ?

[Jonathan H]

The 3rd missing medical student suspect of 1888, John Sanders, was in a lunatic asylum when the police were looking for him, but because the police had the wrong address they thought he might have vanished abroad.

There is a very good piece on this in Dissertations called 'The Third Man' by Jon Ogan.

I think that it is a very important question as to why, if Macnaghten's intention is to hide the Druitt secret, then how come he is putting his name in an official report for the Home Office, a document which at least was archived at Scotland Yard?

My theory is that because the Druitt tale had leaked out of Dorset once, in 1891, it could do so again. Mac, rightly or wrongly, believed that this was, after all, the real Ripper. He thus needed it on file that Scotland Yard--really just himself--had investigated this suspect and provide a plausible explanation for why he had not been arrested. Mac left it on file, what we know from other sources he did not believe, that M.J. Druitt was a minor hearsay suspect against whom there was no evidence.

Yet he also committed for for the same file that Druitt might not be a doctor but was definitely erotically turned on by ultra-violence.

[Stephen Thomas]

Yet he also committed for the same file that Druitt might not be a doctor but was definitely erotically turned on by ultra-violence.

Do you know anybody who agrees with you regarding this seriously weird assertion?

[Jonathan H]

Everybody outside of RipperLand.

Weird compared to what?

Compared to here?

Where some people actually think that Mac means by 'sexually insane' that he thinks Druitt was gay.

Of all people at the Yard, this graduate of Eton--with a working knowledge of masturbation and homosexuality and who was a friend of Wilde's--is supposed to be a reactionary, Victorian homophobe (Mac wrote 'solitary vices' about 'Kosminski', whereas Anderson, characteristically, wrote 'unmentionable vices')

Macnaghten in his 1914 memoirs clearly defines 'sexual mania' and sexual insanity as gaining erotic fulfillment from watching or participating in acts of extreme violence, including homicide.

In the filed version of his Report, Macnaghten writes that Druitt was definitely sexually insane. No doubt about it and so the family, inevitably, 'believed' he was the Ripper (whereas in 'Aberconway' Mac had said it was an 'allegation' and that the family only 'suspected'. It is often claimed that the official version dispenses with the speculation and exaggeration of the 'draft'. Well, not regarding this critical aspect where it is firmed up).

'Said to be a doctor ...' means that this suspect might be a doctor, or might not be as we are not sure. Yet all it takes is to look it up, even in the Victorian Era, if somebody is a graduate-registered physician, or not.

It's therefore a dodge. Macnaghten does not want it on the official file that he claims that Druitt is definitely a doctor as I believe that he knew he was not one.

But Mac does want it on file that Druitt was definitely turned on by ultra-violence.

A couple of years ago Paul Begg made the same point on the other site, about 'sexual insanity' as in what Macnaghten meant by the use of this term. This triggered the usual resistance that Mac must have meant gay, and so on.

More interestingly another poster grasped the irresistible logic of this interpretation; that Macnaghten was saying that Druitt was turned on by extreme violence. That the evidence for this was ... that he was Jack the Ripper.

I had been arguing this for some time. That Mac sets up a circular argument. As in Druitt was Jack the Ripper because he was sexually insane and he was sexually insane which is why he was Jack the Ripper.

[Phil Carter]

Dear Phil C

Your number 7) is wrong; Macnaghten does not call the un-named Druitt a doctor in his memoirs of 1914.




See the pattern?

Hello Jonathan,

Ok..what about the other 9?

I see a pattern alright. And it isn't the pattern you see, I'm afraid to say.
The question is whether the revelation of said pattern will recieve the same sort of fair mindedness as you have recieved over yours (which frankly isn't a lot, given the responses over the years to your own theory)..

Reason?

Nothing must change, Jonathan. Nothing must be seen to change either.


Phil

[Jonathan H]

To Phil c

Ain't that the truth.

On the other site, to even suggest that Druitt broadly matches Lawende's description--that's all, generically not specifically--is to place yourself beyond the pale.

[Limehouse]

Ok, so I'm hoping regular contributors to Druitt posts will be patient with me - you have so far - because I want to pose a few things that puzzle me.

So, Abberline didn't know that Druitt was a suspect at the time he was investigating the murders and that is why he claims only 'to have heard that story' years after the events. Fine. I can accept that.

Macnaughten believes Druitt to have been a 'better suspect than Cutbush' because he had private information relating to a belief that emerged from within Druitt's family that he was the ripper because he enjoyed violent sex - and the evidence for this is that he was Jack the Ripper.

Am I doing ok so far?

So, Druitt's brother hands the police a letter that says something like 'since Friday I have thought I would be like mother and the best thing is for me to die'

Can I ask how precisely this fits with the idea that his family believed him to be a violent sexual maniac and, in fact, the ripper? Druitt's mother was believed to be suffering from 'melancholia' - depression (with perhaps the hint that she may also have had dementia) and it is doubtful whether this included a taste for violent sex.

There are, of course several possibilities here:

1. The letter was genuine and his family accepted that as the reason for his suicide until they afterwards began to suspect him of the killings or some evidence to link him with the killing emerged.

2. The letter was fake, written by the family (because they believed he was the ripper) to divert attention away from Druitt as a suspect and to supply a reasonable reason for his suicide.

3. The family strongly suspected Druitt was the ripper, tracked him down and had him murdered/murdered him following the last attack and wrote the letter as an explanation for his suicide. This would account for Druitt having purchased a return train ticket and I'm sure this has been suggested before.

4. Druitt was depressed and took his own life. He left a note explaining his feelings and fears. At some point after this, some people/a person who had distant dealings with the family or a grudge against them started fanciful rumours that linked Druitt to the killings.

Any thoughts?

[pinkmoon]

I know in "the ripper legacy" by Martin Howells and keith skinner the authors make a point about druitt buying a return ticket to through himself in the Thames miles away from where he lives why didn't he throw himself in nearer to home.

[Jonathan H]

I think you work backwards from Mac's certainty in 1913 and 1914, and the de-facto third version of his 'Report': "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper" (in which Druitt is not described as a drowned, unemployed doctor).

Between the Kelly murder and his suicide, I think Druitt confessed to a priest, or a member of the family, or a person who was both (Rev. Charles his cousin, or Rev. William Hough his bother-in-law).

The 'sacred' confession is kept secret, but the deal is that Montie must get himself sectioned. Instead of going like motherhe leaves word he has suddenly gone abroad and discreetly takes his own life, weighting his own body hoping it will never to be found.

The family, or at least some family members, certainly William, now learn the truth of the confession and try and find him, all their fates hanging in the balance.

Montie surfaces in the river and William deceives the inquest at the very least by not telling them that his brother believed himself to be the fiend and killed himself out of some kind of state of mental torment due to this belief (he had confessed and the net had begun to close, though nothing to do with the cops).

The Druitts continue on with their respectable trajectory--it had been a narrow escape.

But there is a weak link who believes that the truth must come out. This I think was Vicar Charles who approaches his local and Tory MP, Henry Farquharson, in early 1891, in the hope of conferring with an officer of the state without it being a cop.

In confiding with the MP, this priest figure carefully and discreetly excises from the suicide tale of the 'son of a surgeon' the confession to a priest, telescoping the timeline to create a confession in action, the incriminating timing of murder and self-murder, rather than a confession in words. This eliminates the role of a reverend of the Anglican Church.

Unfortunately, Farquharson is your classic upper class prick and begins telling people in London and taking credit for solving the mystery.

Before this can metastasize into a huge story Frances Coles is killed and Jack is back.

While the Met are checking out Tom Sadler, Macnaghten uses his Old Boy Net contacts to identify the MP and meet with him, below the radar. He hears the tale, tells him to shut up, and checks out some newspaper accounts. Farquharson turns out to be wrong. The drowned barrister killed himself three weeks after Kelly.

Nevertheless, Macnaghten meets with William and/or Charles Druitt and learns in detail about the confession in word. Rightly or wrongly he is convinced as well. He reassures the family that he will protect them, as much as he can.

But the Vicar says the truth must come out eventually. Mac persuades him to keep quiet until the 10th anniversary of Montie's funeral and only to reveal the truth as a mixture of fact and fiction--after all, the cleric had already done this with the MP. Do it again and be honest next time that you are doing it: "substantial truth in fictitious form".

By the time Charles Druitt does this in in 1899, Macnaghten has got in first with his own covert mix of fact and fiction, much more friendly to the Yard, and the overt mix is quashed and forgotten. The key to Sims' Drowned Doctor is that there was no time to confess in word (Farquharson's error) and so that sidelined the Vicar as a dotty oddity, instantly forgotten.

Something like this is the real story of the Ripper, after 1888, and it does not directly involve Abberline, Anderson, Swanson, Littlechild, Smith or Reid.

Yet four of those significant cops will advocate, to varying degrees, a chief suspect who was deceased soon after Kelly, or a medical man, or who definitely fled abroad, or who might have gone abroad and might have taken his own life, or who was suspected by his own people, or who was sectioned in an asylum, or who definitely drowned himself.

[Limehouse]

Thank you Johnathan. Excellent stuff. I need some time to digest all of this.