Druitt's personality

[Robert]

Very interesting, Jonathan. Perhaps a Freudian slip by the priest.

[Jonathan H]

To Robert

Sorry, that's my fault for always doing this in haste.

The transcription is wrong.

In the original newspaper article it is 'Whitechurch Murders--Solution of a London Mystery'.

I think that the priest, possibly also a family member, cracked when Montie left word he had gone abroad and not turned himself into the nearest madhouse. He told William, who now believed that his missing brother was a serial killer, an extraordinary thing to think unless you had compelling reasons.

To Bridewell

What you are doing is writing about legal evidence; eg. evidence that would be used in a court case, or not.

Actually no such evidence existed against Druitt when Macnaghten investigated him because he was already long dead.

Yet even a posthumous investigation proved to this police chief's satisfaction that Montague Druitt was 'Jack'. The dilemma for him was what to do with this information. For three years he did nothing--he just sat on it.

What we have is a primary source, a policeman, who had many countervailing pressures--class, institutional embarrassment, temperamental--not to accept this solution, and yet he did. That's compelling, as the source is going against its expected bias, but can never be anything but provisional.

[Bridewell]

To Bridewell

If Druitt confessed his crimes to a priest who then told other people then that is not hearsay.

From the Adult Court Bench Book (England & Wales):

"Hearsay evidence is evidence other than direct evidence, e.g. evidence of what someone else has been heard to say".

Druitt's confession (if he made one) would not be hearsay coming from Druitt; nor would it be hearsay coming from the priest who heard that confession, because he was there. From anyone else to whom that priest repeated what he had heard (and to any subsequent link in the chain) it would be hearsay evidence. MacNaghten's 'private information' - whatever it was - is hearsay evidence.

[Mayerling]

Hi Graham,

While a confession may be somewhat useful (especially if it includes information only the criminal could or should have known) they are tricky. Constance Kent confessed in 1865 to the murder of her younger brother five years earlier, and that confession led to her going to prison (it also opened a theological/legal problem regarding the revelation of the confression to a minister). But today there are still severe doubts as to whether or not in the confession (Inspector Jonathan Whicher to the contrary) Constance lied to protect another party (her closest brother, her father).

Jeff

[Graham]

Fair enough, but why highly unlikely?

It's convenient that the murderer just happened to make his confession to a priest who appeared willing to break the sacred confidentiality of the Confessional. Jack The Ripper acted like a magnet for story-tellers, and to me at least it's easy to imagine such a story as this being told and re-told over the port and cigars. The truth cloaked in fiction...smacks of Dr Stanley and The Lodger. It'd form the basis of a cracking novel, even today.

By the way, I couldn't see a mention of Whitechurch either.

There is a story concerning the A6 killer James Hanratty, that he confessed to the crime the night before he was hanged, and again how convenient for us that he too happened to confess to a cleric prepared to break the confidentiality of the Confessional. Doing so even in this Godless day and age would render the priest concerned open to very serious repercussions.

Graham

[Robert]

Hi Jonathan

Whitechurch? Where does it say that?

[Jonathan H]

Fair enough, but why highly unlikely?

[Graham]

Western Mail
19 January 1899

WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?

Thank you, Jonathan. It sounds highly unlikely to me, but so long as you think there's something in it, then that's the main thing.

Ta,

Graham

[Mayerling]

Aything is possible Robert.

I provisionally subscribe to the theory that Montie confessed to his brother-in-law William Hough, also nearby in London, and then after the killer vanished Hough told William who went into meltdown.

But I think that Vicar Charles Druitt is the likely author of the 1899 piece the paper will not publish. True, he is in Dorset not the 'North', but that maybe a polite ruse the paper has agreed too.

- The Vicar claims his name gives away the murderer's.
- He has titled the piece 'The Whitechuch Murders', and Charles' parish was Whitchurch.
- Charles was a Vicar in 1899 (and was in Dorset when the story leaked in 1891, unlike Hough or William) and died that year.

But what would I know, just being one of the lunatics who has taken over the asylum.

With all due respects Jonathan it is frequently quite refreshing to have a take over by "lunatics" of an asylum. Keep going my friend.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Aything is possible Robert.

I provisionally subscribe to the theory that Montie confessed to his brother-in-law William Hough, also nearby in London, and then after the killer vanished Hough told William who went into meltdown.

But I think that Vicar Charles Druitt is the likely author of the 1899 piece the paper will not publish. True, he is in Dorset not the 'North', but that maybe a polite ruse the paper has agreed too.

- The Vicar claims his name gives away the murderer's.
- He has titled the piece 'The Whitechuch Murders', and Charles' parish was Whitchurch.
- Charles was a Vicar in 1899 (and was in Dorset when the story leaked in 1891, unlike Hough or William) and died that year.

But what would I know, just being one of the lunatics who has taken over the asylum.

[Robert]

It's certainly intriguing, Jonathan. As to the identity of the clergyman who supposedly received Monty's confession and then told a brother clergyman the identity of the murderer (not sure if this was ethical, but there you go), apart from the Druitt clergyman there is one other candidate : John Henry Lonsdale.

Re the north country vicar, I can't help wondering if this was Gatty's dad. Gatty's middle name was Tindal, and that middle name was shared by Sergeant Henry Tindal Atkinson, who attended Lord Wimborne's ball. Atkinson was one of the sponsors for Monty's application to the Inner Temple. I wonder if the Gattys and Atkinsons were related.

[Jonathan H]

To Stephen Thomas

I knew that since the answer is yes, Mac mentions the Druitt family as 'his own people', then the goal posts would, inevitably, be moved.

No, he does not get it from Anderson.

Macnaghten reshaped the data on Druitt, kept it fluid from 1898. He wrote 'family' in both versions of his Report, but for the public this became 'friends' in Griffiths and Sims.

Similarly Macnaghten compressed Druitt's place of work and the place he lived into a single location so that nobody reading his memoirs, who knew the Druitts or had been a graduate of the school. could possibly connect this Jack with Montague Druitt.

To Bridewell

Yes, you are though you are hardly alone.

If Druitt confessed his crimes to a priest who then told other people then that is not hearsay, especially if the confession checks out even posthumously.

I believe that Macnaghten met with the priest to whom Montie made his confession.

Why would he not have?

To Robert

Western Mail
19 January 1899

WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?

'We have received (says the Daily Mail) from a clergyman of the Church of England, now a North Country vicar, an interesting communication with reference to the great criminal mystery of our times - that enshrouding the perpetration of the series of crimes which have come to be known as the "Jack the Ripper" murders. The identity of the murderer is as unsolved as it was while the blood of the victims was yet wet upon the pavements. Certainly Major Arthur Griffiths, in his new work on "Mysteries of Police and Crime," suggests that the police believe the assassin to have been a doctor, bordering on insanity, whose body was found floating in the Thames soon after the last crime of the series; but as the major also mentions that this man was one of three known homidical lunatics against whom the police "held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion," that conjectural explanation does not appear to count for much by itself.
Our correspondent the vicar now writes:-
"I received information in professional confidence, with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification.
The murderer was a man of good position and otherwise unblemished character, who suffered from epileptic mania, and is long since deceased.
I must ask you not to give my name, as it might lead to identification"
meaning the identification of the perpetrator of the crimes. We thought at first the vicar was at fault in believing that ten years had passed yet since the last murder of the series, for there were other somewhat similar crimes in 1889. But, on referring again to major Griffiths's book, we find he states that the last "Jack the Ripper" murder was that in Miller's Court on November 9, 1888 - a confirmation of the vicar's sources of information. The vicar enclosed a narrative, which he called "The Whitechapel Murders - Solution of a London Mystery." This he described as "substantial truth under fictitious form." "Proof for obvious reasons impossible - under seal of confession," he added in reply to an inquiry from us.
Failing to see how any good purpose could be served by publishing substantial truth in fictitious form, we sent a representative North to see the vicar, to endeavour to ascertain which parts of the narrative were actual facts. But the vicar was not to be persuaded, and all that our reporter could learn was that the rev. gentleman appears to know with certainty the identity of the most terrible figure in the criminal annals of our times, and that the vicar does not intend to let anyone else into the secret.
The murderer died, the vicar states, very shortly after committing the last murder. The vicar obtained his information from a brother clergyman, to whom a confession was made - by whom the vicar would not give even the most guarded hint. The only other item which a lengthy chat with the vicar could elicit was that the murderer was a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End - eventually his victims; and that the assassin was at one time a surgeon.'

and,

George Sims as Dagonet in 'The Referee'

February 16, 1902.

'The charitable organisation known as the After Care Association is in every way worthy of public support. It takes care mentally deficient patients who are

Discharged from Lunatic Asylums

because they are no longer mad enough to be kept in there. That is to say, it provides supervision and attention for the large class of lunatics who are liable after their release from asylums to be driven mad again by the stress of daily life.

The question of the premature discharge of lunatics is a very serious one. I have been hammering away at it during the whole period of the REFEREE's existence. To this premature discharge are due many of the daily tragedies which startle the newspaper reader. A certain number of homicidal maniacs are let loose upon society every week, are allowed to return to their families, and remain with them until a fresh outburst of insanity once more compels their removal.

Frequently this outburst - or, rather, this recurrence - of mania means a murder - sometimes a massacre. The homicidal maniac who

Shocked the World as Jack the Ripper

had been once - I am not sure that it was not twice - in a lunatic asylum. At the time his dead body was found in the Thames, his friends, who were terrified at his disappearance from their midst, were endeavouring to have him found and placed under restraint again.'

In both sources culpability for the murders comes from the maniac's own lips. The second source we know is Druitt being hidden; 'substabtial truth in fictitious form' whereas the second is likely to be Druitt as the coincidence is too strained.

[caz]

Why should not new posters not be rescued from decades of drivel?

Hi Jonathan, I nearly needed a change of drawers then.

You are volunteering to rescue new posters from decades of drivel? Or was the double negative intentional and you meant why should they be rescued from your decades of drivel to come?

Oh Lordy, are they in for a treat either way.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Anyhow I'll be banned for good for defending myself, and that can only do me a favour.

Hi Jonathan,

There's nothing wrong with defending your theory, and a good one is nothing to get defensive about either.

Moreover, you won't be banned because of me. I have never reported any of your posts and never will. They are far too entertaining for that.

Love,

Caz
X

[Stephen Thomas]

Why should not new posters not be rescued from decades of drivel?

new posters are not the men

to not be rescued

from decades of drivel