fairly good family

[Lechmere]

Jonathan
What I said was that if your assessment of Macnaghten was true - that he had deliberately misled his colleagues (not just Anderson) about the identity of the lead suspect in the most high profile unsolved murder case in the history of the Metropolitan Police, (and he could not be sure that Druitt was the actually definitively guilty) and had been prepared to mislead the Government by including Ostrog in his list - then he was appalling.
That is the only conclusion anyone could come to.
But I don't accept that he deliberately misled his colleagues or that he was prepared to mislead the Government - so I don't think he was appalling.

I think Macnaghten was vain and a bit silly. That has no real bearing on how polite and accommodating he was with junior colleagues such as Wensley the Weasel.

[Jonathan H]

Wesley ... the Weasel?

Is there anybody at Scotland Yard who does pass muster with you?

I know you think my portrait of Macnaghten is wrong, and that is your right to your interpretration.

I understand why it must be resisted at all costs, or else the house of cards collapses.

I can only deal with the sources as I see them. Macnaghten knew that Kosminski was alive, and yet his senior, Anderson, and his junior, Swanson, did not.

He also knew that Ostrog was not mad and not a doctor, and also knew that he was in a French cell at the time of the murders. Yet he still let Griffiths (1898) and Sims (1907) write about the un-named Russian as if he were still a significant Ripper suspect (albeit a fictionalized variant of Ostrog, that even the thief himself would not have recognized as himself).

To see Sir Melville as just a bit of a duffer, amiable but hopelessly forgetful and under-informed, is to be hustled from the grave by a man who has been dead since 1921.

[Lechmere]

But you see him as a malignant misinformer.

Wenlsey was known as the Weasel to his criminal detractors.

[Jonathan H]

But you did not reveal that, not until I asked?

'Malignant misinformer' is your interpretation. It's certainly not mine.

To me, to borrow John Le Carre's phrase about one of his ficitonal operatives, Mac was the 'honourable schoolboy'

So, tell me how Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten of C.I.D. should have acted supposing I am right, and he met with the Druitts, or at least a Druitt, in a private meeting between Feb 18th 1891 and March 1st 1891? And that he or they told him the whole hideous truth about their deceased member which had been with-held from the Chiswick coroner in 1889.

What should he have done next?

[Lechmere]

If you are right, (with a very big 'if' there) Macnaghten should have (and in all probability would have) told the family that he was duty bound to reveal this information to his superiors and close colleagues as otherwise they would still be looking for Jack the Ripper.
Of course almost nothing the family could have told him would have amounted to proof that Montague Druitt was Jack the Ripper, but that evaluation would not have been up to Macnaghten alone. What if he had been run over by a proverbial bus the next day?
By (supposedly) muddying the waters by masking Druitt's identity he was acting quite appallingly - by (supposedly) falsely claiming that Ostrog was a suspect he was being totally misleading - he was willing to tell bare faced lies to his superiors for no good reason.
By (supposedly) leading Anderson and Swanson up the garden path about Kosminski he was acting in a disgraceful manner.
Whatever his faults I do not believe that Macnaghten was so disgraceful a character to behave in such a manner as you describe. Being a senior Scotland Yard policeman was not a game.

I thought you might know about the Weasel as you were quoting him. I was just kidding in using his negative nick-name.

[Jonathan H]

Look, I do appreciate that in this debate you see yourself as actually defending Macnaghten as perhaps a bit loose, but not an arch deceiver.

That it is actually I who is defaming him. I get that. In most secondary sources the portrait of him only works if you leave stuff out. If you have it all in front of you then the dodginess is obvious.

Do you know that most Ripper books do not even make the point that the Druitt "family" became "friends" in Griffiths and Sims--eg. they are disguised.

Why did they do this? This question is not asked by most books. and when it is asked and answered--to protect them--the logical implication is not considered that if these genst are doing it for the family then wny not for their maniacal member too?

Unless ... they were?

I have to go where the sources lead me. Whether Macnaghten comes out of it good or bad is a matter of opinion, but I know he was consciously manipulating data for his own purposes.

He did treat the subject of the Ripper as a "game", though a serious one because he had many competing interests to juggle. He also showed a natural genius for public relations.

Ironically in your own post you bump up against the exact dilemma Mac faced. I think he was told by the family that Montie had confessed, that the confession was lucid and not delusional (and admitted to the five c-murders). Evrything checked out. This was 'Jack' but it was

But there was nobody to arrest, and other murders had happened that the police had acted as if by the same murderer (he was just coming off the Sadler-Coles debacle). It could never be a definitive legal solution.

If wrote a report about a dead man then it could not be kept confidential (a report that people know exists, that is) and if the story came out Scotland Yard would be pilloried all over again--plus they could not prove it was Jack anyway--the Druitts, already socially pariahs, might have to sue if it was claimed they knew before the Thames suicide and had done nothing, the Liberal-Radicals would be up in arms (especially after 1892 when they were the incumbents).

What to do?

Especially if he knew the Vicar was going to release the story on the tenth anniversary (was it Macnagten who convinced him to do it as a schoolboyish mixture of fact and fcition, based on what Farquharason had already done?)

When he wrote the 1894 report Kosminski and Ostrog were Ripper suspects, almost certainly from files now lost, but minor, fringe figures.

Plus he never really dropped Ostrog in it, because that report was seen by nobody. He never sent it to the Home Sec. despite what he will have Sims broadcast in the Edwardian Era.

I think he acted wisely and appropriately under difficult circumstances.

The Druitt family were very lucky that the Chief Constable was an Old Etonian who regarded his first loyalty to the safety of the realm (eg. build up the Yard's rep, not allow it to be harmed), and his second to their continued prosperous trajectory if that could be secured (Griffiths and Sims, as pincers, took care of the Vicar). Plus, this was a top cop with a grudge about the way he had been shabbily treated (by Warren and the Home Office) and the way huis mentor had been eezed out (Monro), and so acted to some extent as a law unto himself.

If you think that is all deplorable, fair enough, but that is a moral judgement. In terms of the sources this is the strongest interpretation of how he acted, and why he acted the way he did.

[Lechmere]

Yes, the point I was making is that you are portraying Macnaghten as someone who behaved in a way that would make him a disgrace to his profession.
Which I don’t think is born out by the reo=cords

That the Sims ‘friends’ were actually ‘family’ is interpretive isn’t it? (I can’t remember)
In any case it is just one more error in the record – and the easiest explanation for these errors was faulty (as in mistaken) information at source, rather than a deliberate effort to deceive.
You are now saying that Macnaghten was genuinely ignorant about Ostrog’s status in 1894 and only became aware of the truth about him later?
So you can concede that Macnaghten wrote his 1894 report based on faulty and incomplete information.

Again even if the Druitt solution could not be legally definitive, why not write a report and why worry about the family being exposed if it leaked?
They had told him about it. How could they sue for libel?
In any case if the story leaked they would be suing he newspaper that leaked it not the police.
Why would Scotland Yard be pilloried if the story came out? It was case solved.
Why shut the vicar up – why not let nature take its course? No excuse for being sued there was there?
If he was behind shutting the vicar up the obvious reason was vanity – that he had the answers and he didn’t want anyone else to have them or be seen to have them.
There was no reason for Macnaghten to show loyalty to the family of a minor country doctor. They were far from being in the top set – not even in the second eleven in terms of class.

[Jonathan H]

Everything you have written is wrong.

I will show you why, line by line.

Yes, the point I was making is that you are portraying Macnaghten as someone who behaved in a way that would make him a disgrace to his profession.
Which I don’t think is born out by the records

We have to agree to disagree about that last line. It is the fragmentary records--which you never deal with except very superficially--that shows he was quite obviously being deceitful when he felt it was the only way to prevent greater harm.

That the Sims ‘friends’ were actually ‘family’ is interpretive isn’t it? (I can’t remember)

Sorry, Lech', no it is not "interpretive"; you're memory fails you here.

In the Macnaghten report(s) it clearly stated that the family "believed" or "suspected" that their deceased member was the fiend because he was, or was alleged to be "sexually insane".

In Major Griffiths this became "friends". That's a fact.

The question is why?

George Sims repeated this disguise several times, eg. the 'mistake' was never 'corrected'. A "good family" was obscured by upper class gents for the sake of all concerned.

We can see, in Sims, that the brother searching for his missing sibling has been veiled as the friends searching for their pal, eg. the "mad doctor".

In Mac's memoirs he writes "his own people" suggesting but not quite stating that it is his family with whom he lives. Sims in 1915 goes further saying that the people who notice him missing live with him, again strongly implying family, not friends (they are lifting this incriminating element from 'The Lodger' to avoid having to deal with the confession in word).

That the friends, eg. brother, was searching for the missing Montie is not in either P.C. Moulson's report (how could it be?) and nor is it in either version of the Mac Report.

It is, arguably, the smoking gun that Macnaghten was well-briefed about Druitt and his family.

In any case it is just one more error in the record – and the easiest explanation for these errors was faulty (as in mistaken) information at source, rather than a deliberate effort to deceive.

Really?

So it is just a fortunate accident that Mac's otherwise awesome capacity to recall the tiniest details about cases totally failed him here about even the basics, and this failure--by pure good luck--prevented the family from being exposed among their respectable peers?!

Because all it would have taken is "young barrister", plus "Thames suicide", plus "Ripper" and they would have been shunned and ostracized.

You are now saying that Macnaghten was genuinely ignorant about Ostrog’s status in 1894 and only became aware of the truth about him later?
So you can concede that Macnaghten wrote his 1894 report based on faulty and incomplete information.

Nice try, bush-lawyer.

Michael Ostrog, as we know, was considered dangerous and missing by the constabulary. Macnaghten turned him into a more Ripperish figure by having him become a real doctor and really insane. The report was written in Feb 1894. It was a few months later that it turned out Ostrog had an iron-clad alibi for the murders (and for the last theft from Eton) and had to be released--with ten pounds compo.

But Mac could not let it go, an infantile reaction I grant you.

When he wrote the 'sexed up' version for the Major, he kept Ostrog yet he knew he was cleared. He further bitchily fictionalized him as carrying surgical knives, of being a danger to women (the real Ostrog was quite a charmer of the fairer gender). In Sims 1907, with the reference to the Russian doctor being incarcerated abroad we know he knew.

You have it backwards. His capacity to turn the con man Ostrog into a real doctor is the confirmation he has done the same thing with the young lawyer Druitt.

Again even if the Druitt solution could not be legally definitive, why not write a report and why worry about the family being exposed if it leaked?
They had told him about it. How could they sue for libel?
In any case if the story leaked they would be suing he newspaper that leaked it not the police.

I never said that the libel suit would be against the police. The family would have sued if it was implied hat they knew and did nothing. The "West of England" MP story, arguably the Ripper Rosetta Stone, in the "Bristol Times and Mirror" of Feb 11th 1891, directly and tremblingly refers to the libel laws--that they cannot say too much without activating them (some metropolitan papers were so fearful they dropped the word "son of a surgeon".)

Of course he worried about the family.

It was Mac's style and character to try and help people--so the primary sources tell us. Plus he may have felt a measure of protection towards them after they had, in agony and distress, told him the whole story.

We'll never know and we never meant to know.

Why would he not try and assist them?

This idea hat he simply calculated that they were not aristocrats so why bother, is not real world. Anyhow, it is not what he did, whatever his motive or feelings towards them.

Why would Scotland Yard be pilloried if the story came out? It was case solved.

Because they had been chasing a phantom for over two years. The killer was identified but beyond earthly justice.

To compound the humiliation they had arrested a working-class slob, Sadler while the real fiend had been a Tory--Jack the Tory! So acutely embarrassing was this element of the truth--at least so Mac judged--that he concealed it for fifteen years. Sims had to make the most outlandish claims that the police were hot on the trail of the doctor. Hey, they praxtically pushed him in!

Therefore it was heartening for me, among many other examples from this newly discovered source, to see Guy Logan in 1905 have the Druitt figure, Mortemer Slade (who is an athlete and an Oxonian, yet neither of those details are in the Report(s)--another coincidence?) wrestle with the Macnaghten figure (Edmund Blake) on a bridge over the Thames while a posse of Bobbies stand back and watch.

In his memoir, Macnaghten conceded that the Ripper being a major suspect in 1888 was not true.

Why shut the vicar up – why not let nature take its course? No excuse for being sued there was there?

See above.

If he was behind shutting the vicar up the obvious reason was vanity – that he had the answers and he didn’t want anyone else to have them or be seen to have them.

You must really do some reading of what I am analyzing and arguing, instead of always shooting from the hip.

I have never suggested that Mac shut up the Vicar. I have argued that he gave the idea to the cleric of admitting he was telling lies as it has a peculiar schoolboy logic about candour, eg. I am not lying if I tell you I am lying.

Or, Macnaghten got the idea from the Vicar, and then got in first with his own "substantial truth in fictitious form".

Griffiths and especially Sims--who pointedly targets the Vicar--neutralized the idea that the police had never heard of this Ripper, and neutralized the notion that the real killer could have had time to confess anything to anybody.

Almost certainly they are wrestling over the same figure--Montague Druitt. Ironically the Vicar's Fiend is closer to the historical Druitt than the Griffiths-Sims' "Drowned Doctor"--yet we know the latter figure is Druitt.

There was no reason for Macnaghten to show loyalty to the family of a minor country doctor. They were far from being in the top set – not even in the second eleven in terms of class.

I agree, and he might not have if protecting the family did not also mean he could self-servingly enhance the rep of Scotland Yard by shielding them--which it did and so he did (eg. a young barrister became a middle-aged doctor; the Dorset family became London friends; and we nearly caught him).

Macnaghten is quite brazan about this as he must have known that other police (Smith, Reid, Abberline) would have challenged this myth--which they did. Mac and Sims decided that their spoilsport dissent would count for little, and it didn't (while, typically, Anderson agreed with the timing, just not the class and ethnicity of the fiend).

To be honest, I think the received wisdom here, that the family were accidentally protected by a chief's suddenly poor memory is beyond a travesty.

Finally there is this, the first primary source confirmation (found by Chris Phillips) of what I have argued for years: that Sims was protecting the Druitt family--from his own mouth. It is one of the most important sources ever found on this subject, but not here where it disappeared into the ether almost instantly, eg. it is nothing.

Well, I think it is something, and you cannot imagine what I felt when I first read it, Lech'.

The ‘Gloucester Citizen’ of January 9th 1905 (two days after Robert Sagar claimed that the fiend had been identified as some mad, non-entity who passed away in an asylum):

‘Inspector Robert Sagar, who is just retiring from the City Police, is entirely at variance with Mr. George R. Sims as to the identity of “Jack the Ripper”. ... ‘Mr. Sims, from information which came under his notice, has told me on more than one occasion he is convinced that these murders were committed by a medical man who afterwards committed suicide near the Embankment. This man was well-known in London as subject of fits of lunacy, and he belonged to one of the best families in town. It is consideration for his relatives which has prevented “Dagonet” from making a full disclosure of such evidence as he possesses. … the doctor in the Sims’ theory was never in the asylum.’

The journalist has the last part wrong--from 1902, Sims was writing that the doctor had been incarcerated in a madhouse, perhaps twice.

Nevertheless, Sims has supplied enough details for this London, V.I.P. family, who had a medical member who drowned himself in the Thames, to be exposed among their peers.

That was reckless of him, hey!

But the Druitts were not ruined because those details Sims has supplied to this reporter-crony are a mixture of fact and fiction, eg. substantial truth in fictitious form.

Can you really, hand on heart, tell me with a straight face that it was just a lucky break for the Druitts due to Sims' source, Mac, being so hopelessly inaccurate that a middle-class clan from Dorset became an upper class family based in London?

That Sims, a self-made literary superstar who was nobody's fool, says he has to protect the Ripper's family but in fact only did so by sheer accident???

Consider that Macnaghten would have read in Moulson's report that M. J. Druitt threw himself into the river at Chiswick, not the Embankment in the city's center.

Another memory malfunction ...?