Druitt Disguised--by accident or by design?

[Lechmere]

Why didn't Macnaghten just go with Kosminski as the major suspect. That would have hidden Druitt better surely, if that was his aim. Better than dropping veiled hints surely. Or he could have adopted Tumblety if he wanted to be different from Anderson - as you think he pushed Tumblety in Littlechild's direction.
If he made deliberate errors in his account of Druitt in the memorandum - why did he make deliberate errors over Ostrog and Kosminski? I see a pattern.

[Jonathan H]

To Lech

I completely agree, and have always said so on this aspect.

It would have been so much easier for Macnaghten to plump for Kosminski or Ostrog. Or at least their fictional counterparts.

After all, he had hustled the Polish Jew as deceased to the superior he despised and did not trust, and the latter had grabbed the masturbator with both hands.

The 'better classes' were primed for the killer to be a foreigner, a Jew, a poor wretched immigrant, a beast from the abyss.

Instead, and this is why I admire Macnaghten so much (infatuated is not too strong a word) he refused to do this.

Yes, he would cheekily enhance the Yard's image while compassionately shielding a 'good' family, but he would not let his fellow Gentiles off the hook.

Barrister or doctor the Ripper had been an Anglican, Gentile gentleman and the middle and upper classes of England were going to have to face this unwanted and distasteful reality--the maniac was one of us, not one of them.

In fact, the better classes accepted the Drowned Doctor with hardly a compliant, i think because Druitt had been so smoothly turned into 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'; one of the classic cautionary monsters of Victorian fiction.

And yes, there is a pattern alright, though not in the way you think.

Take Ostrog.

Macnaghten was there at Eton as an Old Boy when the Russian committed a robbery. Much later he wrote to the asylum to keep tabs on this faker. After he wrote the official version of his report Ostrog was cleared of even being a minor Ripper suspect--and Mac knew that too (Sims, 1907) as he was in a French asylum. Yet Mac still pushed for him as part of the alleged trio of big suspects from 1888 to Griffiths and Sims after that point.

Out of spite for what he had done to his beloved school, Macnaghten turned Ostrog into a woman-hating, authentically insane, surgical-knife carrying maniac who was really a doctor.

Mac knew that Michael Ostrog was not a real surgeon (nor did he believe he was mad) and, therefore, he knew that Druitt was not one either.

In his memoirs Kosminski and Ostrog are dropped as not worth mentioning. This is exactly where secondary sources place the Russian, as cleared.

Martin Fido, who found Aaron Kosminski, rejected him as not matching what Anderson wrote and/or believed (Fido thought it must be another local madman, whereas I think Anderson only ever knew the fictional variant).

The fictional Polish Jew and Russian doctor served Mac's purpose as figures of public propaganda, and then were discarded.

[Lechmere]

The Macnaghten you paint and that you are double handedly infatuated with (yikes) is a total nutcase.

[Jonathan H]

You have every right to your opinion, of course, but I have to say your threshold for somebody being defined as a "total nut case" is pretty low.

[curious]

You have every right to your opinion, of course, but I have to say your threshold for somebody being defined as a "total nut case" is pretty low.

Jonathan,
While I admire your tenacity and creativity where Mac is concerned, your convoluted creation to try to get every thing explained does add up to a very peculiar man. This completely dishonorable creation lives in an age where, I believe, that a man of Macnaghten's class losing his honor or behaving in such a way would have been the death knell to his social standing.

I simply can't buy your creation or explanation. It requires twists beyond anything I think could be the truth.

Did Macnaghten meld Druitt, who committed suicide at almost the right time, with Tumblety, maybe, and perhaps simply as a counterpoint to Anderson's low, Polish Jew.

I suspect Macnaghten's ego demanded that he leave behind something that appeared he (and only he, you notice) had solved the case, and in the form of someone as far from Anderson's preferred suspect as possible.

So, to answer the question of this thread, No, I don't believe it is really Druitt disguised, but Druitt and Tumblety melded.

Velma

[Jonathan H]

To Velma

Thank-you for answering a straight question with a straight answer.

I have to point out that melding Druitt and Tumblety is disguising both suspects.

Macnaghten was peculiar; to be specific he was a case of arrested development, but without him the solution to the Ripper case would probably have been lost.

I do not agree, however, that he acted dishonorably--quite the opposite--nor do I agree that my theory is too convoluted.

Compared to what? The conventional wisdom?

For a number of reasons Macnaghten is deceitful both in sources by him and in sources on his behalf.

Macnaghten almost never appears as anything like himself in books about 'Jack the Ripper'; the sly action man transformed into a bumbling cypher, whereas Anderson, who can be shown to have a genuinely deteriorating memory--intersecting with a stubborn ego--is lauded in some recent books as reliable and well-informed.

Most Ripper books had never noticed that Macnaghten and Griffiths and Sims hid the Druitt family as "friends". If they are being so hidden why not their member--who was the actual murderer?

The latest source about Sims is yet another confirmation of what I have been arguing for years: that protection of the family was of paramount concern.

Not a single poster has dealt with the new source on that basis.

That if Sims' concern is protection of a good family why is he giving so much away that will inevitably expose them? The man was not a fool.

Ergo, Sims knew that he was doing no such thing; that the Ripper was not from a London family, not a physician and did not jump into the Thames from the Embankment.

[Bridewell]

Jonathan, in your first post you say there is enough information to allow "the respected circles (i.e. those who knew Druitt) to recognise Jack". The article includes:

This man was well-known in London as subject fits of lunacy

Is there any evidence that Druitt was well-known to be so afflicted (even supposing that he ever was so afflicted at all)? He was still working as a barrister in the final weeks of his life, not something that a man well-known to be subject to bouts of lunacy would have been allowed to do, surely? If he was not well-known as being subject to such lunatic bouts, how is this reference to lead the minds of those who knew him well towards, rather than away from Druitt? The man is 'a doctor' (wrong), 'well-known in London as subject fits of lunacy' (highly unlikely). Why wouldn't those who knew Druitt simply think that this was a reference to an entirely different suicide, rather than to Druitt himself? It's not as though suicides in the River Thames are, or were, infrequent events.

I acknowledge the sincerity of your views but the notion that MacNaghten deflected suspicion from Druitt by naming him as a suspect, whilst it might grace the pages of an Agatha Christie novel, is just (for me) too convoluted to work in the real world. The best way to convince that Druitt was not JtR would surely have been to make no mention of his name whatsoever.

[pinkmoon]

Jonathan, in your first post you say there is enough information to allow "the respected circles (i.e. those who knew Druitt) to recognise Jack". The article includes:



Is there any evidence that Druitt was well-known to be so afflicted (even supposing that he ever was so afflicted at all)? He was still working as a barrister in the final weeks of his life, not something that a man well-known to be subject to bouts of lunacy would have been allowed to do, surely? If he was not well-known as being subject to such lunatic bouts, how is this reference to lead the minds of those who knew him well towards, rather than away from Druitt? The man is 'a doctor' (wrong), 'well-known in London as subject fits of lunacy' (highly unlikely). Why wouldn't those who knew Druitt simply think that this was a reference to an entirely different suicide, rather than to Druitt himself? It's not as though suicides in the River Thames are, or were, infrequent events.

I acknowledge the sincerity of your views but the notion that MacNaghten deflected suspicion from Druitt by naming him as a suspect, whilst it might grace the pages of an Agatha Christie novel, is just (for me) too convoluted to work in the real world. The best way to convince that Druitt was not JtR would surely have been to make no mention of his name whatsoever.

Imagine having this info regarding such a huge criminal case in your possession I'm sure you would be tempted to divulge something to someone at some stage.Sir Melville obviously had some sympathy for montys family however would he have been totally sympathetic if he thought or knew that the family knew Monty was committing these horrendous crimes well before Mary Kelly was murderd and they did nothing.p.s I'm not prepared to take the argument outside into the pub car park because I have a bad back at the moment nothing at all to do with me been a total coward at all.

[Bridewell]

I do not agree, however, that he acted dishonorably - quite the opposite.

Nor do I, but only because I don't believe that MacNaghten had any real knowledge of the identity of the killer. He just wanted people to think that he did, the invited inference being that, had he been in post in 1888, the crimes would have been detected. To my mind, MacNaghten wasn't a scheming Machiavellian Mastermind so much as a run-of-the-mill, post-event police bullsh*tter.

If he did (which I don't believe) have genuine knowledge of the killer's identity, and something solid on which to support that conclusion, his actions in concealing that knowledge, as a senior police officer, would have been deeply dishonourable. Had he acted as you suggest, and been found out, he would have been dismissed in disgrace -and deservedly so. There is nothing in any way honourable about a police officer of any rank concealing the identity of a murderer in order to protect the good name of his family. Either you are wrong or MacNaghten acted dishonourably.

[Lechmere]

The good name of a humdrum fairly good country doctor's family. Was that worth all that subterfuge? No.
Why did he get details wrong?
Because he didn't know much and filled in the blanks with bull.

[Jonathan H]

To Bridewell

Your first post shows that you do not understand my argument, or I put it badly.

Probably the latter.

You are so far off-track you have ended up agreeing with me while thinking we disagree.

'Mac' and 'Tatcho' disguised Druitt so that the respectable circles in which the Druitt family moved (and the grown-up graduates of the Valentine School) could not recognize him.

Of course the Druitts themselves recognized him, and kept their mouths shut.

But how could the respectable circles in which the family moved recognize their tragic Montie when he had been transformed into a toff physician, subject to fits of mania, from a London-based family and who threw himself into the River Thames--in London.

None of that data matches Montie Druitt--that's the whole point!

That is the disguise.

What makes the new source so puzzling--at the time-- is that the reporter is saying that Sims said the family have to be protected.

But surely Sims has given away so much information that he can be recognized by the circles in which the London family move--even without the name?

Unless. The. Data. Is. Untrue. Which. It. Is.

The question remains: by accident or by design?

I think it is naive to vote for accident, in a culture that was obsessed with reputation, libel and fact mixed with fiction.

Edwardian readers of Logan in 1905 knew that it was such a mixture.

What they could not know which was fact and which was fiction to disguise the innocent -- was is that Mortemer Slade (obviously not the Ripper's real name) was an Oxford graduate? Was is that he was a notable athlete? Was he middle-aged? Was he from an upper class family from the North? Did he have sleek hair, a high forehead, thin lips and narrowly spaced eyes? Was it that he told the people with whom he was living that he was going abroad before he killed himself? Did he drown himself in London-- or outside the city?

Was he really a doctor? A doctor who had never had a patient?

To Bridwell [next post]

Hey, I love to see the righteous indignation of RipperLand in full wrath-mode.

That utter bounder should have been sacked!

How about hung?

How dare he! How! Dare! He!

How dare he complicate our lives as researchers by being --like most historical figures-- complex, and not flat and simple and cartoonish, like his portrayal in most books since the late 80's.

In that case do not ever go near the following historical figures or you will all die of apoplexy at discovering their mixture of good and bad: Pericles of Athens, Martin Luther, Wellington, Florence Nightingale, President Roosevelt (both), Monty (as in Bernard Law Montgomery) JFK (get the smelling salts!), Margaret Thatcher (Bloody Thatch'!) and the list goes on ...

Actually Macnaghten was sacked, sort of, before he even started, by Warren in a political fight with Monro.

I think that left him embittered behind the calculated affability and contributed to his not sharing his Ripper solution with men he regarded as utterly beneath him in class (whereas Monro he adored, and in his case it was to protect his patron from further ammunition that would have been exploited by the latter's bureaucratic enemies).

To Lech

Come on, mate, you're a hard-nosed cynic and can appreciate a sly hustler.

Mac's subterfuge was not just to protect a country doctor's relations, it was to avoid further humiliation for Scotland Yard that they had been chasing a corpse for several years.

Very successfully.

So successfully, that to this day RipperLand will not budge an inch from the theory (it's a definitely ascertained fact, you Aussie swine!) that Druitt killed himself at the right time.

A previous poster trotted out this stale chestnut.

They are being conned by 'Mac', almost one hundred years after he died.

Actually Druitt died two years too early. Macnaghten had to pretend that McKenzie and Coles were never thought by anybody at Scotland Yard to be by 'Jack'.

Instead Mac created a bogus litmus test: 'Jack' could not have functioned after Miller's Ct., not for a single day (by 1907, Sims has it that the killer could not have lived for even a single day). So, Ostrog was driven mad, Kosminski could not stop self-abusing but the Englishman, ah, he cracked and drowned himself.

Therefore on the 'awful glut' litmus test Druitt comes off best, and that is why the 'police' think that of these three he's the best, or better than Cutbush (who had been sectioned for stabbing women!) But other than that timing, there was no hard evidence against any of them.

In his 1914 memoir Macnaghten revealed that the un-named Druitt was unknown until years after he killed himself, that his culpability was based not on timing but information posthumously received and assessed (he implies this came from the man's family) and that he did function after Miller's Ct. for a single day, and night-- and might have been longer.

Nobody noticed that Mac had gone 'off-message', then or now.

Your bull$$$$ detector is thus, arguably, off the true scent.

[GUT]

But how could the respectable circles in which the family moved recognize their tragic Montie when he had been transformed into a toff physician, subject to fits of mania, from a London-based family and who threw himself into the River Thames--in London.

None of that data matches Montie Druitt--that's the whole point!

That is the disguise.

And in the MM named him as MJ Druitt

What a great disguise!

[curious]

T
I have to point out that melding Druitt and Tumblety is disguising both suspects.

Ergo, Sims knew that he was doing no such thing; that the Ripper was not from a London family, not a physician and did not jump into the Thames from the Embankment.

I see your point - somewhat, but don't see the melding as disguising, but as creating a completely different suspect -- one that can never be proven guilty or innocent because he never really existed.

And I don't think Macnaghten presented the solution to the Ripper case. He created a suspect that was the opposite of Anderson's to make it appear that he, and he alone, had solved the case.
On point 2: Then why print anything at all?

Especially if you KNOW what you're printing is a lie -- that goes against basic journalism, which should be seeking the truth, not hiding it. I know, slanted journalism is everywhere, but I find it distasteful.

I'm sorry, Jonathan, but it is just too convoluted.

edited to add. You're right, of course, Macnaghten is not real in any of the books in which he appears. People never or rarely are in books as they appear in real life -- the writer's choice of words is wrong or understanding of the person is incomplete it's an attempt to reduce a three-dimensional real person into two dimensions and badly chosen words.

Velma

[Jonathan H]

To Gut

Much as you hate this, it is a great disguise.

It worked?! Yet you, and many others, argue with success.

I appreciate that there will be no concession (no prisoners!) on this, or anything else.

Plus you do not realize there were two versions written for different audiences.

As it was the official report of 1894 was seen by nobody at the Yard--they did not know it existed--so that took care of that. It was never sent. It is a draft for a propaganda offensive never activated. In 1913 Macnaghten denied that there was anything left on file--he had destroyed it (another lie of course) and thus no record remained of the "secret information".

Whereas the unofficial version of 1898 was only seen by Griffiths (who was deceitfully told it was a copy of a definitive home Office Report--he remained skeptical) and George Sims, who was in on it.

Not only did they disseminate Druitt (carefully altered) on behalf of Macnaghten without the name, they disguised the family as friends too.

This propaganda offensive was launched to head off the 1899 Vicar (and Anderson) and was totally successful (it is only some modern writers who take Anderson seriously).

In 1959, when Dan Farson had the name--but from the unofficial version, so it's mix of fact and fiction and propagandist purpose was lost--he still could not find Druitt's death certificate. With the deadline fast approaching for his TV show he despaired in TV Week that he was not going to find "The Man Who Had Never Died".

Then a Farson researcher working backwards from a Druitt descendant found found Montague (the age Mac provided, 41, had totally thrown them) and he was a barrister and not a doctor.

In a fateful assumption for this subject Farson assumed that Macnaghten had mis-recalled or been misinformed, after all he was not there in 1888 (neither of course was Druitt as a suspect, not until "some years after").

Macnaghten had been deceased since 1921, and Sims from 1922, and yet the 'Drowned Doctor' shield nearly held up in 1959. It had held up just long enough for all the graduates of the Valentine School, contemporaneous with the tragic Mr. Druitt, to have all died off a few years before.

It .. worked.

As it was Farson did not reveal the name (only the initials, at Lady Aberconway's insistence) and it was not until 1965 that Druitt's name finally entered the public arena with Cullen's book.

Yet in 2014 Montague Druitt, among the 'community' is barely a suspect.

That poor innocent, gay martyr, cruelly shanghaied in death by an incompetent, lazy desk jockey (or, conversely, in the one official document he wrote on the subject he dismissed Druitt as unlikely and minor) and whose family never harbored such terrible suspicions, and if they did, well, so phucking what.

'Ripperology', though it is not conscious of it, has taken up the torch of Druitt-Disguised and perpetuated it all over again (albeit with different and modernist fictitious features).

A mystery where there is no mystery.

To Velma

You are talking in cliches.

eg. Journalists are honest seekers of the truth.

eg. Historical figures are never the real people on the page.

Look, Sims was not a conventional reporter-- that is why Macnaghten chose him. Because, in the strictest sense he was not a journalist but a novelist, playwright, poet, a dabbler in crime reporting. The most famous of his two eras. A journeyman writer who wrote what he liked--a law unto himself.

You don;t believe me-- then read his Ripper reports of 1888 on this site and compare them with [from] 1899, and you tell me if he is not indulging in cheerful deceit.

Macnaghten is sometimes portrayed in a kinder light; as a straight shooter, but one with maybe an over-rated memory. That he was too honest and straight to have archived material he knew to be false. He never was as sure as Anderson and--officially--he thought Druitt was a possible 'Jack' but not necessarily a likely one.

I think this interpretation misses the mark of the real person, misses his memoirs revelations and 1913 comments and misses his certainty about Druitt.

[GUT]

G'day Jonathan

As it was the official report of 1894 was seen by nobody at the Yard

We have no idea who at the yard did or didn't see it.

It was an official report by Macnaghten put on the file, anyone could have and as far as we know did see it.

In a fateful assumption for this subject Farson assumed that Macnaghten had mis-recalled or been misinformed, after all he was not there in 1888 (neither of course was Druitt as a suspect, not until "some years after").

But as valid an assumption as the one that Mac was not being truthful.

Look, Sims was not a conventional reporter-- that is why Macnaghten chose him. Because, in the strictest sense he was not a journalist but a novelist, playwright, poet, a dabbler in crime reporting. The most famous of his two eras. A journeyman writer who wrote what he liked--a law unto himself.

A couple of weeks ago you told me I didn't know what I was talking about for suggesting that Sims was not a genuine journalist.