Druitt Disguised--by accident or by design?

[GUT]

G'day again Jonathan

I wonder if you have ever considered that Macnaghten may have got it so terribly wrong simply because he was under informed.

Maybe his "private information" came from his old Etonian mate the famous MP.

[Jonathan H]

To Gut

Everything you have written is wrong.

We know that the other police probably did not know about Druitt--and about that file--because none of them refers to him either 1.) at all, or 2.) in a way which matches the real man.

As if somebody has misled them. Hey, I wonder who?

Tom Divall's memoir is critical here as Macnaghten told him that the Ripper was a man who fled to the States and died there in asylum.

When Mac's successor retired and wrote about the fiend, he had to use Major Griffithsas a source because he was unaware of the Report lying in the archive.

We also know that Macnaghten knew more than other police about the suspects, for example that Ostrog was in a French asylum (Sims, 1907) at the time of the 1888 murders, and that Aaron Kosminski was alive and not deceased (Aberconway; Sims 1907) as wrongly believed by Anderson and/or Swanson.

You wrote that Sims was only a novelist, and therefore was not a reliable source. He wasn't just a novelist. He was many things, including a true crime writer and lobbyist for the innocently convicted. In 1904 his rep was never higher in helping to exonerate Adolf Beck.

I think Macnaghten gained his initial private briefing from Farquharson, the original fictionalizer, but he later learned the facts--William Druitt was trying to find his missing brother (Sims, 1902, 1903, 1907; Mac, 1914), there were no blood-stained clothes as he was found a water-logged corpse, and nor did he kill himself the same night (the Vicar, 1899; Mac, 1914).

Actually, I have not only considered that Mac was poorly informed. For about five years I accepted it as fact.

Until I saw the "West of England" MP source in 2007 and realized that I would have to revisit my assumptions.

Here, for the first time for me, was evidence that belief in Druitt as 'Jack' predated the 'memo(s)' and emerged from "his own people" in Dorset.

I was stunned. Once I read Mac's memoirs then I realized that I had been off-track, and that most--not all--secondary sources hopelessly misunderstand this subject. That it is not a mystery. It was solved, posthumously, and the solution was broadly shared with the public, but with discretion (there was Druitt's respectable relations to consider and he was beyond due process). The Ripper was a mad toff--top hat or not.

[Mayerling]

A Suggestion - for better or worse

I am to make a suggestion here which you can discard (possibly will) or ignore or think about.

Let's go back to step one - it is 1894. Montie has been in his grave now five years (and the victims up to Mary Kelly up to six). Suddenly we have the "Cutbush" incident, which has been the most powerful post-November 1888 incident since the murder of Frances Coles in February 1891. By his odd behavior Thomas Cutbush is now a suspect for being the Whitechapel Killer with the public.

Melville MacNaghton decides to write a memorandum listing three names of whom the Yard felt were the three best candidates who were known as suspects. He is supposed to send this memo to Home Secretary Herbert Asquith. Instead he files it away.

We know it names Osrog, Kosminski, and Montie Druitt.

Now, the discovery of the 1905 newspaper item that heads this column is a wonderful find - no question of that. But I just wonder about the following.

We are assuming that after December 1888 nobody at all at the Yard ever wondered about the Chiswick suicide of Montie Druitt. We are assuming that through old boys connections (and I don't deny they could be quite powerful) Melville learned of the Druitt family tragedy and suspicions.

This is possibly through the bigmouthed M.P.

Why couldn't it have been through some low level constable or police inspector who knew of Druitt, but never was able to look into the matter?

That said (admittedly) supposed police officer still was at the Yard in 1894, at the time of the Cutbush incident, and managed to mention his feelings about Druitt to Macnaghton?

There not only had to be a point where Druitt was officially brought to Macnaghton's notice - and if it was in some rising star in the Yard headed off as carefully as possible (if Macnaghton decides he must protect the Druitt family).

[Jonathan H]

Dear Mayerling

I think that anything is possible.

But is it probable?

The limited sources we have strongly suggest that--as Mac's memoir attests and the behaviour of the police do over Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles--that they had never heard of Druitt in a Ripper context before the MP blabbed.

Macnaghten in 1913 and 1914 took implicit credit for finding the identity of the fiend, and for keeping it as his secret.

It exited with him.

Actually he left behind not one but two documents naming Druitt, but the official one was unknown. For example, Macnaghten's successor had to use Griffiths to write about the trio of suspects.

At his 1913 press conference Mac that it was his property to do with as he saw fit, not the Yard's.

Therefore, no, it's not about a Bobbie or a field detective.

It is about this upper class sleuth, roving alone as usual, and meeting with Farquharson and then the Druitts or a Druitt.

Who could have stopped him ...?

I think the Chief Constable also met with the Vicar and convinced him, with impeccable schoolboy logic, to only reveal the truth in ten years as "substantial truth in fictitious form". That to tell lies, but to be honest about it while doing so, is morally ok.

[Defective Detective]

I'm an idiot.

I'm slow on the uptake.

I might be a mental invalid.

But I cannot, for the life of me, follow any of this. It seems to have spun off of my thread here, but following all of this is beyond my ken. I've not read any books on Druitt and know about him only from the various encyclopedias of the case which have been published (the Mammoth Book, the A-Z, and so on).

I have in my mind the general outline of the orthodox Druitt theory - disturbed barrister with a familial history of mental illness who drowned himself in the Thames in December of 1888 and was therefore associated with the Macnaghten "glutted to death" drowned doctor. This seems something entirely new, but I can make no sense of it at all.

It's been seven months since the OP posted in this forum, so I shan't expect a reply soon. But if he or anyone who has been following this could, could someone please explain to me this "Druitt disguised" theory, in detail so simple that a child could follow it? I have a hard enough time working my way through the subtle class-based nuances in the 'orthodox' Druitt story (the allusions to pederasty which may or may not be there, and so on); this double-layer of nuance is thoroughly beyond me without someone to break it down, start to finish, in an easily digestible form.

But I'm still very interested in it, primarily because I fear much of the motivation for dismissing Druitt as a suspect (and also Severin Klosowski to a lesser extent) is a conscious rejection of "Gentleman Jack", a deliberate attempt to avoid cliche which may run too far in the other direction.

And if someone does opt to do this for me, for which I would wave palm leaves and sing a thousand hosannas, bear in mind please that I'm American and completely oblivious to the English caste system of the eighteen hundreds.

As far as I can decipher it, the suggestion is that Macnaghten had some very definite proof that Druitt was the Ripper, but obscured this, for the sake of the Druitt family name, by a very clever trick: admitting to Druitt's being a suspect, but deliberately obfuscating the details, so that future students would be more apt to discount him. But I am not familiar enough with the details to parse this through at all.

[GUT]

G'day DD

As far as I can decipher it, the suggestion is that Macnaghten had some very definite proof that Druitt was the Ripper, but obscured this, for the sake of the Druitt family name, by a very clever trick: admitting to Druitt's being a suspect, but deliberately obfuscating the details, so that future students would be more apt to discount him. But I am not familiar enough with the details to parse this through at all.

That is the theory in the most basic terms, and by the way, the OP [Jonathan] posts on the forums almost daily [so I don't understand you saying he hasn't posted for seven months] and indeed under the thread "New Book" you will find detals of his soon to be released book on Montie.

[Cogidubnus]

I am to make a suggestion here which you can discard (possibly will) or ignore or think about.

Let's go back to step one - it is 1894. Montie has been in his grave now five years (and the victims up to Mary Kelly up to six). Suddenly we have the "Cutbush" incident, which has been the most powerful post-November 1888 incident since the murder of Frances Coles in February 1891. By his odd behavior Thomas Cutbush is now a suspect for being the Whitechapel Killer with the public.

Melville MacNaghton decides to write a memorandum listing three names of whom the Yard felt were the three best candidates who were known as suspects. He is supposed to send this memo to Home Secretary Herbert Asquith. Instead he files it away.

We know it names Osrog, Kosminski, and Montie Druitt.

Now, the discovery of the 1905 newspaper item that heads this column is a wonderful find - no question of that. But I just wonder about the following.

We are assuming that after December 1888 nobody at all at the Yard ever wondered about the Chiswick suicide of Montie Druitt. We are assuming that through old boys connections (and I don't deny they could be quite powerful) Melville learned of the Druitt family tragedy and suspicions.

This is possibly through the bigmouthed M.P.

Why couldn't it have been through some low level constable or police inspector who knew of Druitt, but never was able to look into the matter?

That said (admittedly) supposed police officer still was at the Yard in 1894, at the time of the Cutbush incident, and managed to mention his feelings about Druitt to Macnaghton?

There not only had to be a point where Druitt was officially brought to Macnaghton's notice - and if it was in some rising star in the Yard headed off as carefully as possible (if Macnaghton decides he must protect the Druitt family).

In my experience Jeff on history is well worth listening to...

All the best

Dave

[Jonathan H]

It's my fault, not yours, for writing obscurely.

I will try and do it succinctly.

In the Edwardian Era many people believed that the Whitechapel case was solved because a very famous and popular true crime writer of the day said so.

The killer had, apparently, been a real life 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' figure who had drowned himself in the River Thames as a police dragnet fast closed upon him.

It was not a mystery.

In fact, the real suspect, a young barrister was being discreetly disguised, both to protect his respectable relations and to [deceitfully] enhance Scotland Yard's dented rep, e.g. we were just about to arrest the "mad doctor" (a single police chief did not stumble upon this suspect until years after he had killed himself).

By the 1920's the case was re-mystified by new writers who could not find any such "drowned doctor" in the media of 1888, and therefore assumed the story must be a self-serving, police myth (they were half-right).

In the post-war era the middle-aged, "mad doctor" turned out to be a young barrister. In the long run this ruptured understanding of the subject into the 21st Century--because the Edwardian era public relations campaign to hide Montague Druitt was not rediscovered too.

The iconic image of the Top Hat Toff is partly correct. The killer had been an English gentleman, just not a medical man.

Can we know this for a fact? Of course not. The suspect was deceased before he even came to the attention of this senior police administrator in 1891.

It must remain an historical solution based on limited and fragmented sources, e.g. it is a provisional solution, but arguably the best.

Where I disagree with many here is the conventional wisdom that Sir Melville Macnaghten never knew much about Montague Druitt, and never made a thorough investigation of this solution.

My book is an attempt to restore his reputation as a sleuth, and with it the veracity of his solution:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Ripper--Case-Solved-1891-Hainsworth/dp/0786496762/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412293026&sr=1-1

[Jonathan H]

Several years ago, the Eureka! moment I had was when I was examining these puzzling sources by George Sims--the doctor had been in an asylum; a medical man but no patients for years--and wondered where on earth this data had come from?

It is not true of Druitt and it is not in either version of Macnaghten's reports?

That police chief has a really lousy memory, hey?

These were also 'mistakes' that had the effect of further spinning the story away from the real figure.

Well, I thought, at least that was a bit of luck for the Druitt family (who are themselves disguised as "friends") that their tragic Montie cannot be found because of the 'errors' of this police chief and his close friend the famous writer ...

Bingo!

That's when I realized I was being conned. It was deliberate, not accidental.

Earlier in a classroom,a student had asked me what "said to be a doctor" meant?

I parroted the received wisdom: it meant that Macnaghten was under-informed about his own suspect, and so on.

She was unimpressed, asking if the line could not mean he was hedging his bets--that he was writing might be a doctor?

I said, yes, that's possible.

To which she replied, so, it could mean--might not be a doctor ... and he wasn't, right?