Druitts hand writing

[pinkmoon]

Rereading richard Whittington Egans excellent book "jack the ripper the definitive casebook "and I'm surprised to read in the chapter regarding Druitt and cricket it mentions about David Anderson having the dear boss letter compared to druitts handwriting and the conclusion that they are the same can anyone shed any light on this for me.

[ChrisGeorge]

Rereading richard Whittington Egans excellent book "jack the ripper the definitive casebook "and I'm surprised to read in the chapter regarding Druitt and cricket it mentions about David Anderson having the dear boss letter compared to druitts handwriting and the conclusion that they are the same can anyone shed any light on this for me.

This is the first time I have heard this claim, although I should say that all supposed handwriting "matches" to Dear Boss are probably not what is claimed. Dear Boss is written in period copper plate writing. Suspects of the day wrote in period copper plate writing. End of story. Add that to the fact that most who have studied the Whitechapel Murders think Dear Boss and the other letters were not written by the killer, this makes such claims absurd.

Best regards

Chris

[pinkmoon]

This is the first time I have heard this claim, although I should say that all supposed handwriting "matches" to Dear Boss are probably not what is claimed. Dear Boss is written in period copper plate writing. Suspects of the day wrote in period copper plate writing. End of story. Add that to the fact that most who have studied the Whitechapel Murders think Dear Boss and the other letters were not written by the killer, this makes such claims absurd.

Best regards

Chris

Hi Chris,thanks for the reply I have to admit I think if the claim was true then it would be general knowledge and as you said the "dear boss" letter is a fake.

[David Andersen]

Rereading richard Whittington Egans excellent book "jack the ripper the definitive casebook "and I'm surprised to read in the chapter regarding Druitt and cricket it mentions about David Anderson having the dear boss letter compared to druitts handwriting and the conclusion that they are the same can anyone shed any light on this for me.

Yes. It was the copperplate style which was considered similar. It was suggested by Nigel Moo
rland (the then editor of The Criminologist) that the handwriting was also very similar to the Druitt samples which I had obtained in 1971 from the Treasury building in the Inner Temple. As far as I know Druitts handwriting had not been seen before.

[GUT]

Yes. It was the copperplate style which was considered similar. It was suggested by Nigel Moo
rland (the then editor of The Criminologist) that the handwriting was also very similar to the Druitt samples which I had obtained in 1971 from the Treasury building in the Inner Temple. As far as I know Druitts handwriting had not been seen before.

G'day David

So it hasn't been examined by, say a Forensic Document Examiner?

[Jonathan H]

Sir Melville Macnaghten claimed it took him a year but he finally pinpointed the journalist who had hoaxed the 'Dear Boss' letter.

From two other sources of the Edwardian era, this is likely to have been Tom Bulling.

In his memoir Macnaghten claimed that the [un-named] Druitt had written the Goulson St graffiti.

I argue that he did not mean this, e.g. he was lying. It was a right upper-cut, so to speak, to Anderson and his Jewish slur. In neither version of Mac's report does the graffiti figure, nor in what he propagated via Sims.

[Rosella]

Victorian schoolchildren of all classes were taught to write in the copperplate style, which remained standard for most of the century, so I don't think that would be anything to get excited about.

As far as Macnaughton is concerned, old men misremember, and perhaps in his memoirs he believed he had seen a photograph of the Goulston St graffito. Or perhaps his hatred of Anderson was still simmering.

[Damaso Marte]

If somebody is arguing for their suspect by bringing up any of the letters, that's a good way of knowing that they're not worth listening to.

[Jonathan H]

Seen a ... photograph of the graffiti??

Unlike every other significant police figure, with the arguable exception of Jack Littlechild, his memory of what happened between 1888 and 1891 was spot on.

If you do not believe me then check out the memoir. It's online.

Nevertheless, I agree with you about his book seething--not simmering--with hatred for Anderson, and Warren.

[Rosella]

Well, Jonathon, Macnaughton's memory certainly failed him in 'Days of my Years' when he recalled that his suspect (Druitt) 'committed suicide on or about the 10th of November.'

[Lechmere]

Littlechild's memory was spot on?
Yet he thought Tumblety was dead - so perhaps he was told that at the time (as part of a glorious misinformation campaign by Macnaghten) so it was spot on.
Macnaghten only becomes 'spot on' when you inventively ascribe his not so 'spot on' remarks to being deliberate lies to misinform his colleagues.

[Jonathan H]

To Rosella

Yes, that's true.

You could have also said that Sir Melville strongly implies, quite falsely, that the killer lived with his family ("his own people") and they realized he was the killer because the only time he was "absented" from home were the nights of the murders.

This was a fictional element lifted lock, stock, and two smoking barrels from the novel "The Lodger", which he simultaneously tries to distance himself from ("The New York Times Book Review" was not fooled in 1914).

He also wrote that the [un-named] Warren had resigned over his inability to catch the fiend. This was also untrue--and he knew it well, but he wanted to sink the boot into his bureaucratic enemy while providing the reader with some kind of exciting climax, what with the Thames drowning with-held. Hence the hyperbolic finale of his account in which the Ripper is virtually omnipotent against the state: they could not catch, identity or stop him.

Fortunately he imploded, otherwise [the un-named] Druitt was invulnerable.

His self-destruction, however, was unknown for years and that is incontrovertibly accurate.


What you are missing about his dating of Druitt's suicide is the following:

1. Macnaghten could not write that it was around December 1st 1888 that 'Jack' killed himself as that would give the game away; e.g. Montague Druitt might become recognizable to the respectable circles in which the surviving members of his family moved. As Mac had not wheeled out the facade of the middle-aged medico, he decided he could also not deploy the memorable Thames finale.

2. Mac had also quashed the Farquharson-Sims timeline of murder followed by instant self-murder (hence the need to steal from the novel). He allows that the killer killed himself the next morning, or next afternoon, or next night, or was it the day after that? Thus Mac cleaves closer to Druitt's historical timeline than did the MP twenty-three years before. It is not just another day; it ruins the incriminating 'double bang'.

What is more the killer was compos enough to get away, as he does in Guy Logan's semi-fictional version of 1905, the only other source from that period that is more accurate about Druitt's movements after the Kelly bloodbath (in his book Mac quotes a long section by Sims about Cream, and the Ripper is mentioned killing himself immediately. He does this to make it clear that he and his pal are talking about the same suicide, but they seemingly disagree about the timing of his self-murder).

3. Macnaghten rarely backs himself into a corner without a handy exit. The killer killed himself on November 10th ... or thereabouts. So, it might have been ... the 11th? Or ... the 12th? Could it have been the 13th? And so on.

In a sense Druitt did co-habit with his own people: the students and servants of the Valentine school were, broadly speaking, his people, as they were not strangers. They were clients.

To Lechmere

Jack Littlechild writes that it was "believed" that Tumblety took his own life. He remains uncertain.

With good reason as the Irish-American had done no such thing, dying of natural causes in 1903.

Somebody he took seriously must have told him that, yet he remained skeptical.

Tom Divall would claim in his memoirs that Sir Melville had told him the Ripper fled to the States and died there in a madhouse.

Sound familiar?

[David Andersen]

G'day David

So it hasn't been examined by, say a Forensic Document Examiner?

Hi Gut
I have no first hand knowledege of Druitts handwriting having been examined by a forensic document examiner. As far as I recall, from 40 odd years ago, it was Morlands intention to have the handwriting examined but since only copies of Druitts handwriting was available any such examination would be tentative.
I do not subscribe to the view that Druitt wrote any of the letters.

[Harry D]

And even if he did, what would it prove?

[Jonathan H]

Montague Druitt--you know, 'Jack the Ripper'--did not write any of the letters, at least according to Sir Melville Macnaghten.

It was Macnaghten, so he claimed in 1914, who identified the author of the 'Dear Boss' hoax letter in 1890.

Of course his reputation is so basement-low here that most in RipperLand will not even credit him with even that.

Not even with the possibility of it.

It's all so fragile isn't it--the need for Mac to be wrong, and to be wrong about everything.

I presume this nervousness springs from the collective feeling among some quarters that if he is found to be right about even just one thing, then much of what is called Ripperology would collapse.

In 2005 on this site--on a Mac thread--a person called David Cartwright wrote a very astute and prophetic warning:

'Macnaghten has been the favourite target for the "bricks" of Ripperologists for more than thirty years. It seems to me, they fear that if research ever throws up a solution to this mystery, that it will come from this direction.'