Where was Montague John Druitt 1 December 1888

[GUT]

G'Day John Savage

The more I read it the more I lean to your interpretation.

[Jonathan H]

Quote:
Griffiths was not writing a novel about crime in 1898, but no doubt you will not back down from that mistake either.

Yep I was wrong when I said that.


Apology accepted.

[Mayerling]

[QUOTE=Jonathan H;287935]Macnaghten was quite possibly the only policeman at the Yard with a sophisticated attitude towards homosexuality.=QUOTE]

I am aware that GUT was aiming at a discussion regarding Montague's whereabouts on 1 December 1888 when he began this thread (an interesting point, by the way, even if he was at or was not at court that day), but the quoted comment above is from one of Jonathan's comments. The issue I am suddenly curious about is the attitude of the Yarders to homosexuality or other forms of what would be termed "deviant sex" in 1888 - 1913.

It is not too difficult to say the police would look with dim views about such subjects, for the laws were designed to prosecute people for such deviancy. In 1885 Henry Labouchere (a self-proclaimed liberal) had pushed for a law that increased the punishments on homosexuals, and within a few years there would be a major scandal involving the male bordello on Cleveland Street. But note: Lord Arthur Somerset (who was highly placed in Queen Victoria's household as Master of the Horses) was implicated and he was allowed time to flee (for the rest of his life) to France. The investigation by Inspector Abberline was not too successful (though the bordello was closed down). And the newspaper editor Ernest Parkes was successfully proseducted by the Earl of Euston (also implicated) for libel.

Even Oscar Wilde, had he moved himself after the debacle of the first trial in 1895, could have fled for the Continent. He failed to because his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, talked him out of doing so.

In his memoirs of Max Beerbohm ("Portrait of Max") S. N Behrman and Beerbohm discussed the destruction of Wilde's reputation and career. Beerbohm told Behrman about how he and another friend of Wilde's went to Scotland Yard to talk to an unnamed police inspector -and were somewhat crestfallen about the inspector's constant refrained that Wilde was guilty of a "gruss [sic] crime".

Was the attitude of the Yard like that of the unnamed inspector, or was it closer to the slightly more liberal view that when there was time the suspect (Somerset, the slow-moving Wilde) could still flee? I really wonder about this.

[Mayerling]

On the use of literature for historic purposes.

Actually I am aware of two trends. First that novels written in a given time are reflections of the ideas and events of their time. Second that they sometimes are based on specific events.

Example of the second - Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" - wherein he basis the story of the destruction of Mr. Verloc, Winnie, and her brother on the 1894 attempt by Martial Bourdin to blow up the Greenwich Observatory (which only ended with Mr. Bourdin getting blown up and killed).

Example of the first - Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" - wherein Dickens turns a jaundiced eye on the legal community out of the Lord Chancellor's office in the case of "Jarndyce v. Jarndyce".

I also admit my own weakness in this area. Ever since I read Richard Altick's "Victorian Studies in Scarlet" (New York: Norton Books, 1970) I have had the habit of looking at literary texts (especially in mystery and detective stories) to see what real life cases suggested ideas to the authors for their works. I have to admit that I do get carried away about this, but it is interesting.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

To Mayerling

You need look no further than the personality and temperamentl differences obvious between Macnaghten and Anderson.

A gap so wide that they loathed each other.

Anderson describes Mac as a rank coward in his memoirs, albeit not by name, in a ridiculous and mean-spirited anecdote in which the old buzzard blames Mac for bringing to his attention a threatening letter against himself (anderson threw it in the fire) by a lunatic who then, sure enough, tried to assassinate PM Gladstone. Anderson blames his un-named subordinate for distracting him--due to his embarrassing nerves-of-jelly--from appreciating the seriousness of the threat.

In his subsequent memoir Macnaghten lists some of the giants of his profession (including Abberline, Swanson and Littlechild) but nowhere does he mention the boss he worked for for twelve years.

Mac wrote that Kosminski was guilty of 'solitary vices', whereas Anderson described them in his memoir as 'unmentionable vices', and in a defensive letter to a Jewish newspaper essentially linked such behaviour with being a maniacal murderer (by the time Sims write about this suspect in 1907, the masturabtion element has been dropped altogether).

Whereas Macnaghten was the product of an exclusive boy's school where homosexual experimentation was rife, and initially wanted to become an actor. He had friends in the theater, writers and actors, like Sims and Oscar Widle. the latter's face was the earliest memory that Lady Aberconway, the chief's daughter, could recall peering into her pram.

After Wilde's downfall Mac still called Wilde a "genius" but lied to his little girl about why he had gone to prison--for forgery. That is serious, but not a crime of 'damnation'.

I speculate that Macnaghten played a game with Littlechild in the latter's retirement because he knew he had an unsophisticated and reactionary approach to the matter of contrary sexuality, and becuase Jack Littlechild had been so fundamental in acquiring the squalid evidence against Wilde, his friend and an artist he revered. Hence telling him that Tumblety had likely taken his own life in France.

Of all the police officers who would use 'sexual mania' Macnaghten was the one who at least had a less than Victorian rigidity about sexual alternatives; he was a sort of premature Edwardian. From the Vicar we learn that the Druitt family believed Montie suffered from 'epileptic mania', which would mean he had no memory of his crimes. Macnaghten was more hard-nosed--Druitt was an East End Nero who was completely conscious of what he was doing.

Macnaghten started on the Force just before the Clevenalnd Street scandal broke, yet the whole affair goes unmentioned in 'Days of My Years'. Upper class gentlemen of the Old Boy Net did not tell tales about each other out of school.

When Henry Farquharson was being crucified in his libel suit by a failed, Liberal opponent, who had been asked to leave a private boys' school for being sexually victimized (and therefore was not expelled as the MP was telling people) the Liberal judge, Coleridge, scolded the hapless defendant that since he had attended Eton he knew intimately the kind of vile shananigans that went on in such places.

[caz]

From the Vicar we learn that the Druitt family believed Montie suffered from 'epileptic mania', which would mean he had no memory of his crimes. Macnaghten was more hard-nosed--Druitt was an East End Nero who was completely conscious of what he was doing.

Hi Jonathan,

Good to see you back, engaging in debate once again. I always enjoy and learn something from your posts, even when I find myself questioning some of your interpretations.

From the above, it's easy to see why Macnaghten would have believed Druitt was completely conscious of what he was doing. After all, he could hardly have confessed in any meaningful way to crimes of which he had no memory. And it seems unlikely that the ripper could have been totally unaware of his sexual mania, only ever indulging it to the full in deepest darkest Whitechapel while in a kind of 'epileptic' trance, but managing to get back 'home' each time without incident.

Having said that, I suppose it's theoretically possible that Druitt and/or his 'people' found certain evidence of his guilt after each murderous episode, while he genuinely could remember nothing about it. Might that not account for a decision to make a clean breast of it to a related member of the clergy before ending it all in the Thames? It would at least be a way to reconcile a serial killer feeling the necessary remorse - if he would never have dreamed of committing such atrocities if he knew he was doing it. I'm not sure if there is another way round this problem.

Druitt tried to weight his own body so that he would always be missing, possibly abroad (this echoes Littlechild writing to Sims in 1913 about Tumblety).

If the body did surface his death would only be a regional sensation, and not reported in London--which it wasn't...

...It is possible that George Valentine did not even know that Montague had been found, and that there had even been an inquest. All he may have known was that Montie had mysteriously gone abroad--inevitably triggering his dismissal--and the next thing he knew the older brother arrived in a state of alarm and was shown his younger sibling's belongings still at the school, and the next a letter a few days later from the same brother explained that Montie had killed himself due to being temporarily insane, as had been judged by a coroner in Chiswick.

Once again, I do wonder why you seek to complicate things with a whole host of potentially flawed interpretations, which are not necessary for your basic theory to work and your conclusion to be correct, but require the evidence to be bent out of shape, ignored or discarded, yet still make a thorough dog's breakfast of Druitt's actions in the run up to his suicide. Why isn't it enough for a seriously disturbed Jack the Ripper (or at least a seriously disturbed man who believes himself to be the ripper) to fear he is losing his marbles like his own mother, or fear being put into an asylum if you prefer, and to drown himself?

Why would Druitt need or want to 'always be missing', presumed abroad? Why would it be preferable if he was the ripper, to have people think he left England during the school term in mysterious, and therefore possibly scandalous or suspicious circumstances? And why do you need to be right about this particular interpretation, when he appears to have monumentally cocked up if that really was the desired outcome? The stones didn't work, if they were meant to weigh his dead body down and keep it submerged indefinitely. The fact that it did surface, but was not reported in London, spectacularly misses the point. The failure of the stones would only matter if he left himself identifiable, which is precisely what he did. Without the cheques or the train ticket, there would have been no clues to connect a Chiswick drowning with a Blackheath schoolmaster who, by his own account, had left the country some weeks earlier. So please excuse the pun, but your interpretation that the stones were there as part of a cunning (but fatally flawed) plan to keep his suicide a secret forever just doesn't hold water. My own interpretation is a simpler, more immediately practical one. If Druitt wanted to drown, and to do it quickly, jumping from Hammersmith Bridge into that cold December water would have been one option to get him under, and his layers of clothing would have helped him sink. The stones would have been added to stop him surfacing while still alive and, if a swimmer, the survival instinct kicking in and making the process much slower and more distressing.

In addition, Druitt could hardly have been attempting to keep his suicide a secret if he wrote either of the two notes alluding to that very intention, so your interpretation demands that they be forgeries or inventions thought up by brother William after Druitt's body was found and identified, supposedly to deflect any creeping suspicions that his untimely death was connected with the ripper murders - though it's not clear how the letters were meant to do that, or why William would have taken the risk.

Love,

Caz
X

[pinkmoon]

Hi Jonathan,

Good to see you back, engaging in debate once again. I always enjoy and learn something from your posts, even when I find myself questioning some of your interpretations.

From the above, it's easy to see why Macnaghten would have believed Druitt was completely conscious of what he was doing. After all, he could hardly have confessed in any meaningful way to crimes of which he had no memory. And it seems unlikely that the ripper could have been totally unaware of his sexual mania, only ever indulging it to the full in deepest darkest Whitechapel while in a kind of 'epileptic' trance, but managing to get back 'home' each time without incident.

Having said that, I suppose it's theoretically possible that Druitt and/or his 'people' found certain evidence of his guilt after each murderous episode, while he genuinely could remember nothing about it. Might that not account for a decision to make a clean breast of it to a related member of the clergy before ending it all in the Thames? It would at least be a way to reconcile a serial killer feeling the necessary remorse - if he would never have dreamed of committing such atrocities if he knew he was doing it. I'm not sure if there is another way round this problem.



Once again, I do wonder why you seek to complicate things with a whole host of potentially flawed interpretations, which are not necessary for your basic theory to work and your conclusion to be correct, but require the evidence to be bent out of shape, ignored or discarded, yet still make a thorough dog's breakfast of Druitt's actions in the run up to his suicide. Why isn't it enough for a seriously disturbed Jack the Ripper (or at least a seriously disturbed man who believes himself to be the ripper) to fear he is losing his marbles like his own mother, or fear being put into an asylum if you prefer, and to drown himself?

Why would Druitt need or want to 'always be missing', presumed abroad? Why would it be preferable if he was the ripper, to have people think he left England during the school term in mysterious, and therefore possibly scandalous or suspicious circumstances? And why do you need to be right about this particular interpretation, when he appears to have monumentally cocked up if that really was the desired outcome? The stones didn't work, if they were meant to weigh his dead body down and keep it submerged indefinitely. The fact that it did surface, but was not reported in London, spectacularly misses the point. The failure of the stones would only matter if he left himself identifiable, which is precisely what he did. Without the cheques or the train ticket, there would have been no clues to connect a Chiswick drowning with a Blackheath schoolmaster who, by his own account, had left the country some weeks earlier. So please excuse the pun, but your interpretation that the stones were there as part of a cunning (but fatally flawed) plan to keep his suicide a secret forever just doesn't hold water. My own interpretation is a simpler, more immediately practical one. If Druitt wanted to drown, and to do it quickly, jumping from Hammersmith Bridge into that cold December water would have been one option to get him under, and his layers of clothing would have helped him sink. The stones would have been added to stop him surfacing while still alive and, if a swimmer, the survival instinct kicking in and making the process much slower and more distressing.

In addition, Druitt could hardly have been attempting to keep his suicide a secret if he wrote either of the two notes alluding to that very intention, so your interpretation demands that they be forgeries or inventions thought up by brother William after Druitt's body was found and identified, supposedly to deflect any creeping suspicions that his untimely death was connected with the ripper murders - though it's not clear how the letters were meant to do that, or why William would have taken the risk.

Love,

Caz
X

A simple explanation could be that Monty was not jack the ripper but his brother William for some reason thought Monty was hence the lies at the inquest.

[Jonathan H]

To Pinkmoon

This is where we disagree, and I disagree with much of what I call Orthodox 'Ripperology'; which holds that Montague Druitt, a tormented gay person, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Whitechael crimes, and was never believed by any member of his family, pre- or post-, to have done so.

If this becomes untenable for those who do not want to have long-stabnding assumptions challenged, then the fall-back position is that if the family did suspect, well ... many families suspected their members.

No evdience is provided for this handy but empty cliche; that a number of educated, middle-class, english people, who did not live (or work) in the East End, regularly succumbed to such hysteria/paranoia about each other.

I disagree with you that it is 'simpler' that William suspected but had no good reason to.

I think this position is incredibly difficult to fathom, almost absurd.

What the long historical record actually shows is that families are usually the last people to believe such things even after the evidence is in, the jury have convicted and the gallows await. Especially if, in this case, the accused is deceased, has never been formally accused and never will be.

Hence my theory that for members of the family, later a local MP, a police chief and a famous writer--after it had leaked from Dorset--to 'believe' then the evidence must have been compelling. To remain rational they had to accept it and consequently to believe.

Sims' veiled version from Macnaghten has culpability coming from the killer's own lips--implausibly before the murders--and so does the 'North Country Vicar', though plausibily, of course, a confession to a priest after the murders.

To Caz

I think you make a good, logical point about the contradiction of epileptic mania, but Victorian definitions of this mental disease--which does not literally exist--was quite loose: eg. sometimes the afflicted could recall what terrible things they had done, but not control it when they were 'in its grip'.

We disagree about the probable events surrounding Montie's vanishing act.

Could he have been sacked to his face? Yes. Is that likely? I think not.

If you leave to one side the secondary sources on this matter and examine only the primary--what little we have, just scraps--we see that his dismissal from the school is a minor event. It is not linked by any source to his self-murder and is not characterised as being due to scandal.

The cricket club sacked him because he was AWOL, yet at a time when his notes were surely found at the school--or had they been?

I subscribe to the theory that he was sacked from both institutions due to being AWOL. They had no idea he was in a distressed mental state and other newspaper accounts did not bother to embarrass Valentine (some of the accounts claim he received the allusive suicide note, or that he received a note along with the brother's).

I think Montie weighted his body down and was going to try and not admit, to his priest and family (who were maybe the same person) that he had committed the further mortal sin of suicide.

Arguably a strong echo of this is provided to us by the Littlechild letter of 1913. I think that Macnaghten told Jack Littlechild, at some point, that it was 'believed' that the mad docotor/chief suspect of 1888 (in this case Tumblety) had vanished abroad, a probable suicide.

Mad people do mad things. Could I be wrong? Of course, I usually am.

The Big Picture is that Druitt was tormented, not about being gay or being dismissed from the lesser of his two vocations, but because he was--or believed that he was--Jack the Ripper. Rather than the evidence pointing to a tragic delusion gents of his own family, and class, agreed with his admission of guilt.

This was despite so many reasons not to; for example that Druitt died way too early to be 'Jack' as the last murder was Coles in 1891 (and that if true, the Scotland Yard would look like chumps--yet again).

The extraordinary new source by Guy Logan from 1905 arguably confirms much of this, albeit it too is a veiled account, like Sims, the difference being that Edwardian readers knew this (as they did with the 1899 Vicar, though he was quickly quashed and forgotten).

In Logan, Montague Druitt becomes Mortemer Slade (that Christian name is a bit close to the knuckle) and, as I had argued for years, he is a middle-aged doctor who has never had a patient.

Also Mortemer kills himself, he says to himself, rather than be placed [back] in an asylum, and he falsely infroms those with whom he lodges that he 'has business abroad', when in fact he has begun his final odyssey that will end in the Thames.

I had argued for years that Sims had given the false impression (how about he lied) to his large readership that the police were just about to arrest the mad doctor when he slipped through their fast-closing net--that the plods practically pushed him into the river.

Sure enough, Logan, a Sims' crony, has the fiend slipping through the police net and out of London before climactically grappling with a gentleman-private detective (who is clearly a thinly-veiled Macnaghten) as a posse of Scotland Yard's finest stand back and watch their struggle on a bridge (an obvious lift from the Holmes-Moriarty 'final' battle).

Consider that there are three [known] sources that show cognition that Druitt was not a raving husk after Miller's Court, as opposed to MP Farquharson's 'double bang' claims of 1891, picked up and relentlessly propagated by Sims from 1899 to 1917 (Griffiths has the mad doctor wandering around in some kind of state for three weeks).

1. I lump together the half-dozen 1889 sources about Druitt's suicide. He killed himself three weeks after Mary Kelly's murder.

2. Guy Logan's "The True History of Jack the Ripper" (serialised in 1905 in "Police Illustrated News") in which Mortemer Slade exits the East End and is on the run for a day and a night and a day (I believe his source for all was Sims, and his was Mac).

3. Melville Macnaghten's "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper" (1914) in which the un-named Druitt kills himself not on the morning of the 9th Dec. 1888, or at midday, or that evening, or that night, but the next morning, the 10th, perhaps at midday, perhaps in the afternoon, or the evening or was it the night of the 10th--or maybe it was the 11th ("on or about ...")

[Lechmere]

'Lies at the inquest' is slightly over doing it. We don't have much in the way of press reports to go on with which to make such judgements. There is no need for any 'Jack the Ripper' connection for easy explanations to be had for William's testimony.
I struggle to see how these 'lies' have any relevance to William supposedly covering up anything Ripper related.

[Jonathan H]

In my opinion William Druitt--at the very least--lied by omission. He did not inform the inquest as to the real reason his brother took his own life; that he had a double life as a serial murderer.

He may have also lied about his brother lately being a part-time school master, that he himself was the only living relative (apart from the sectioned mother), and the note he produced may have been his own fake to wrap it up quickly.

[caz]

Bats in the Belfry

To Caz

I think you make a good, logical point about the contradiction of epileptic mania, but Victorian definitions of this mental disease--which does not literally exist--was quite loose: eg. sometimes the afflicted could recall what terrible things they had done, but not control it when they were 'in its grip'.

Thanks Jonathan.

Oh yes, I realised that 'epileptic mania' was a Victorianism, and these days we do know a little (not much) more about the human brain and how certain conditions may affect behaviour. For instance, bipolar disorder can be inherited (I know at least one mother and daughter with the condition) and it can cause suicidal feelings and tendencies. I often wonder if this is what Druitt suffered from, because the little understood episodes of mania, followed by depression, might naturally have alarmed anyone witnessing them, making him come across as a Jekyll and Hyde character, unpredictable and capable of all sorts. The condition itself wouldn't have turned him into a serial mutilator, but equally it wouldn't rule him out.

If you leave to one side the secondary sources on this matter and examine only the primary--what little we have, just scraps--we see that his dismissal from the school is a minor event. It is not linked by any source to his self-murder and is not characterised as being due to scandal.

That's how it may appear to you, but Victorians generally played such things down where a deceased friend, associate or family member was concerned, and surely when the report appeared, stating that Druitt had been 'dismissed for serious trouble at the school', it was in the context of the poor chap having shortly thereafter taken his own life. It would have been far more charitable, as well as more appropriate, for the source (especially if this was his brother William, heavily into damage limitation) to have described this 'minor event' as an effective resignation, if the truth was that Druitt left the school under his own steam during term time, without giving notice, to go and jump in the Thames (contrary to anyone's original belief that he was off abroad on some vague and unexplained "business"). By the time the 'serious trouble' was alluded to, the only serious trouble - according to your interpretation - would have been to kill himself without informing the school first.

Back in the 1970s I left my job at a City merchant bank one Friday and didn't return on the Monday because I was fed up with commuting. That week I began a new job close to home and then let my former employers know that I wouldn't be back (yes, bad girl ). They were not best pleased as you can imagine, but they paid me up until my last day and were very decent about it, when in those days they could have penalised me for not working my notice or given me a stinking reference. But the point is, I couldn't have been 'dismissed for serious trouble at the bank'; I was already gone, of my own accord. I had effectively resigned without giving notice, just as you maintain Druitt did, except that in his case he had a rather better excuse, being fed up with life itself.

Mad people do mad things.

And that of course is the catch-all phrase that can make Druitt guilty or innocent according to taste. If he was guilty and took his life, he was obviously very seriously disturbed and could have done all the mad things under the sun. Ditto if he was innocent and took his life due to a fragile mental state.

2. Guy Logan's "The True History of Jack the Ripper" (serialised in 1905 in "Police Illustrated News") in which Mortemer Slade exits the East End and is on the run for a day and a night and a day (I believe his source for all was Sims, and his was Mac).

So how does it help, having one more fictionalised version of the same tale, from the same source? This is like Chinese Whispers unless independent sources can be established, including whoever was right there when Druitt himself was either confessing convincingly or carelessly leaving evidence around. Otherwise we could be talking about another barking mad member of the Druitt family who convinced himself that Monty was a maniac who took his pleasure savaging East End harlots. Mad people do mad things, such as asking Farquhy in confidence for advice about the real maniac in the family.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

In my opinion William Druitt--at the very least--lied by omission. He did not inform the inquest as to the real reason his brother took his own life; that he had a double life as a serial murderer.

But who would ever do such a thing unless they had absolute proof of their sibling's guilt and could produce it? I don't believe even you would claim that anyone - be it William, the vicar, Farquhy or Mac - could have had legal proof, however morally certain they may have been. So to call it lying by omission 'at the very least', because William failed to air his suspicions at the inquest (assuming he had them to begin with) seems well over the top to me.

He may have also lied about his brother lately being a part-time school master, that he himself was the only living relative (apart from the sectioned mother), and the note he produced may have been his own fake to wrap it up quickly.

So basically his 'lies' at the inquest depend on a series of ifs and maybes. In Victorian speak, 'lately' didn't necessarily mean he had not been long at the school; it could also mean he had been a master there lately, or 'of late' or 'up until recently', which was quite true. He could also have meant he was the only living relative representing Monty's family at the inquest. He didn't apparently object to details of all those Druitts attending the funeral being published. And you know how I feel about the suggestion that he forged his brother's suicide note - nothing to gain, but a hell of a lot to lose. People who forge suicide notes and are found out tend to be charged with murder, not perjury.

Love,

Caz
X

[pinkmoon]

In my opinion William Druitt--at the very least--lied by omission. He did not inform the inquest as to the real reason his brother took his own life; that he had a double life as a serial murderer.

He may have also lied about his brother lately being a part-time school master, that he himself was the only living relative (apart from the sectioned mother), and the note he produced may have been his own fake to wrap it up quickly.

Hi jonathan,I have always thought it strange he even involved his mother in the inquest he was not concerned about letting it be known she was in an aslylum he could have quite easily said she was dead was he more bothered about keeping something else quite?

[Jonathan H]

To Caz

We will have to agree to disagree.

The Logan book of 1905 confirmed much of what I had been arguing. It said things that I had been told by postyers was impossible and that nobody suggested at the time, eg. that Druitt would kill himself rather be sectioned (like his mother).

Furthermore it has details that could only come from somebody who knew of Druitt pretty well; eg. that he was an Oxonian, that he was an athlete, that he had told his sporting association he was heading overseas, that he had a high forehead and narrow eyes and sleek hair, and so on.

William Druitt misled an inqiry. He gave the false impression that his brother had taken his own life due to mental instability in the family (in Lognan this becomes an uncle), that his death was the result of a sudden derangement.

In fact, William knew or believed his brother to be a notorious serial murderer, who had confessed all to a priest and taken his own life rather than be sectioned.

That's lying, and quite understandable why he did it.

[caz]

The Logan book of 1905 confirmed much of what I had been arguing.

I'm sorry, Jonathan. I thought you believed Logan's source 'for all' was Sims, and his was Mac. That's what you wrote.

William Druitt misled an inqiry. He gave the false impression that his brother had taken his own life due to mental instability in the family (in Lognan this becomes an uncle), that his death was the result of a sudden derangement.

In fact, William knew or believed his brother to be a notorious serial murderer, who had confessed all to a priest and taken his own life rather than be sectioned.

That's lying, and quite understandable why he did it.

This is not simply a disagreement between us. You cannot say categorically that Monty was not mentally unstable like other family members had been, or that this played no part in his decision to die. Only Monty was in a position to judge that, and he could still have been the ripper in any case. Clearly if he feared being sectioned like his mother, his mental state must have figured in his reasoning. But William could not possibly have known how sane or insane his brother was during his final weeks. And we simply don't know if and when he suspected him of being the ripper, or what evidence he had.

Love,

Caz
X