Druitt's personality

[Jonathan H]

No, he would not have been. He killed himself three weeks after the Kelly murder at Chiswick (and was a gentleman who lived at Blackheath).

The McKenzie and Coles' murders of 1889 and 1891, respectively, proved that Jack was very much alive, and that is how police acted.

One of the biggest fallacies of many secondary sources is that Druitt's suicide is conveniently timed because Kelly is the final victim. Kelly was not considered the final victim at the time. A few years later, however, she was retrospectively made the final victim by a singly police chief to make the timing of Druitt's death fit a new, much truncated timeline.

[Bridewell]

Not A Sudden Thought?

If Druitt had been worried about becoming 'like mother' this would not have been a sudden thought, it would have grown stronger over months if not years.

That's not what I take from the note which was left though:

"Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die."

To me this indicates that the worry was sudden and occasioned by the events of the preceding Friday. Did Druitt's mother suffer from any specific physical ailment in addition to her mental illness? What would cause Druitt suddenly to form the opinion that he was going to 'be like mother'? Would he become suddenly aware of impending mental rather than physical illness?

[Robert]

There's an outside chance that Druitt meant that he was going to ape his mother, i.e. suppose his mother was always wailing "I want to die." Perhaps Druitt, who may have been depressed for reasons unrelated to fears of going insane, decided that he too wanted to die - thus he was going to be like mother and wish his own destruction.

[Bridewell]

There's an outside chance that Druitt meant that he was going to ape his mother, i.e. suppose his mother was always wailing "I want to die." Perhaps Druitt, who may have been depressed for reasons unrelated to fears of going insane, decided that he too wanted to die - thus he was going to be like mother and wish his own destruction.

Has anyone obtained a copy of Druitt's mother's death certificate? If so I won't bother, but if not it might prove illuminating.

[Robert]

Not sure, Bridewell. I don't recall seeing it but my memory isn't that great.

[Wickerman]

That's not what I take from the note which was left though:

"Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die."

To me this indicates that the worry was sudden and occasioned by the events of the preceding Friday.....

Yes, its the choice of words that I question.

If something worried him, wouldn't he (or anyone) go seek professional help, rather than just decide to kill himself?

[Jonathan H]

I think the note was a hasty construct by the brother (he had only a few days) to provide the inquiry with a reason for Montie's suicide, so they could tidily reach a conclusion of temporary insanity--which Dr. Diplock did.

It's quite lame, that note, but also lets slip what the brother was hoping to do if he found his brother alive: have him sectioned like their mother.

If the other primary [posthumous] sources are correct--and most people here dismiss them as utterly false--then William Druitt misled that inquiry, whether the note was real or not, by not revealing that he believed his deceased, younger sibling was a multiple murderer.

[Lechmere]

If you take those sources as being accurate they do not mention William in any case.
You claim that much information is deliberately misleading in those sources - but evidently not this aspect.
William specifically mentioned that others found the letter - so he was setting himself up to be exposed as a liar - if he was, which I rather doubt.

[Wickerman]

We only ever hear about the one letter, but apparently there were two.

The deceased had left a letter, addressed to Mr. Valentine, of the school, in which he alluded to suicide.
A paper had also been found upon which the deceased had written, "Since Friday, I have felt as if I was going to be like mother," who had for some months been mentally afflicted.
Dorset Chronicle, 10 Jan. 1889.

[Jonathan H]

I think William, almost in a state of panic, lied his head off at that inquiry:

- that he had not seen his brother since October, when they were in court together on Nov 22nd.
- that he said his brother had only lately been a part-time school master when Montie had been at the Blackheath school for years.
- that he said that he was the only living relative apart from the ill mother.
- that he produced a note which only alluded to suicide (it's very murky: is this Valentine's note, were there two, or just one, or none?)
- that he heard from a 'friend' that that his brother was missing in London (William had to say an un-named friend because he had allowed no room for a family member to tell him)
- that he did not inform the inquiry that his brother was, he believed, a serial killer.

In the 1889 source William Druitt is searching for his brother, in 1891 the secret leaks out of Dorset where the family was originally from, and Macnaghten writes 'family' for the file in 1894, which becomes the 'friends' in Griffiths 1898, who become the frantic 'friends' in Sims (except arguably 1910, where it is back to family), who become 'his own people' in Macnaghten 1914, which is repeated by Sims in 1915.

I disagree Lechmere, but I understand why it must be resisted at all costs.

What I wrote above is arguably one of the most significant textual breakthroughs of the modern study of the case; the discovery that Macnaghten, with Sims as the bridging source, did have accurate information about the Montague Druitt saga outside of PC Moulson's report (about the recovery of the body from the Thames).

The police chief knew that his older brother was trying to find Montie and knew he had disappeared from the plavce at which he resided.

If William Druitt was lying in saying an anomic 'friend', and he may not have been, it was the same cover adopted later by Macnaghten with his cronies for public consumption.

We can see that in Griffiths and Sims data is being discreetly reshaped (perhaps I should not say 'we', as this is not acknowledged here at all) which means all bets are off that Mac thought Montie was really a doctor--anymore than he believed such a thing about Ostrog.

Except here, of course, where this breakthrough is nothing.

[Hunter]

The McKenzie and Coles' murders of 1889 and 1891, respectively, proved that Jack was very much alive, and that is how police acted.

One of the biggest fallacies of many secondary sources is that Druitt's suicide is conveniently timed because Kelly is the final victim. Kelly was not considered the final victim at the time. A few years later, however, she was retrospectively made the final victim by a singly police chief to make the timing of Druitt's death fit a new, much truncated timeline.

The police acted because they had to. No one was certain, but some policemen were already considering that Kelly's might have been the final murder in the series... long before Macnaghten wrote his memorandum.

In a Sept. 10, 1889 report regarding the investigation of the Pinchin Street Torso mystery, Chief Inspector Swanson wrote:

... What becomes most apparent is the absence of the attack on the genitals as in the series of Whitechapel murders beginning at Buck's Row and ending in Miller's Court...

Note that the McKenzie murder had happened on July 17, 1889.

Then there was the press interview of F. G. Abberline in May, 1892:

...He believes, from the evidence of his own eyesight, that the Miller's Court atrocity was the last of the real series, the others having been imitations, and that in Miller's Court the murderer reached the culminating point of the gratification of his morbid ideas..."

It is more likely that Macnaghten formed the basis of his "canon" from the opinions of some of his colleagues who were actively involved, rather than the other way around.

[Jonathan H]

No, it's not because of the sources we have on the one post-1888murder you do not mention: Coles in early 1891.

A case can be made that Grant was thought likely to be the fiend too, in 1895, and McKenzie and Coles mght be his victims as Jack.

[Hunter]

These officers said what they said. Its there in black and white... Facts... Make what you want of it. Suspect theorists are good at ignoring or twisting facts that don't suit them. But there are a lot of people who peruse these boards for information and maybe a little less biased perspective.

[Jonathan H]

Bias is inevitable in every source. It cannot be avoided, though it can be minimized by acknowledging it. But people who think they are totally free of it are deluding themselves.

There's no such thing as a 'suspect theorist'. There are only theories about the Jack the Ripper subject.

It's just a cliche invented by people here to dismiss anything too threatening, like maybe it was solved back then by the police, or a policeman.

This reductionist, deflective cliche is always wheeled out as soon as a counter-argument is put, and the actual issue being debated suddenly falls away to be replaced by drivel.

You quoted a couple of sources and, as with a lot of people here, you act as if that is that.

In fact a range of primary sources between 1888, all the way to the end of the Edwardian Era, show that different police believed different things and at different times.

Reid never accepted that Kelly was the final victim, in fact he thought this was a ludicrous notion made up by the press.

Plus, the usual 'Orthodoxy' is put that Macnaghten was not there for the entire Ripper investigation, when he was there from June 1889 a period which covered the McKenzie murder, the Pinchin St. Torso murder, the Coles murder, Sadler's arrest and failed identification by a Jewish witness, the surfacing of the Druitt tale from Dorset, Aaron Kosminski's permanent incarceration and, in 1895, the investigation of Grant.

There was no police consensus about who was a victim (including about Smith and Tabram) until Mac anonymously created one in 1894--but only publicly disseminated in 1898--and this influenced a number of police and press: eg. the 'autumn of terror' that was known to have ended at the time with Kelly's murder (Abberline's 1903 interview shows this tension between knowing this and not knowing this at the time).

[Hunter]

Yes, I presented two sources -- one who coordinated the entire investigation throughout, and the other who was in charge of ground operations during the height of the murders.

There was never a police consensus, either before or after the MM. Abberline was inclined to include Tabram in the tally while Swanson seemed to not do so. Arnold thought there were only four victims by the same hand.

Just a little more drival for folks to ponder.