fairly good family

[Lechmere]

It isn't true to say the named or unnamed Druitt dominated late Victorian to pre World War One culture as the Ripper. We also had the unnamed mad Jew (the Kosminsky type) and Chapman to name just two. There were in fact a plethora of solutions and non solutions in the air - as ever.
Among them was one garbled thread that was suggestive of Druitt.

[Lechmere]

With regards to the note that was produced in court.
Is it seriously suggested that William Druitt forged it?
He was supposedly engaged in a cover up operation to preserve the good name of the family.
So he produced a bogus suicide note that detailed that their mother was mad?
What would have been the consequences of him being caught out in his lies?
He would have been struck off as a solicitor and ruined.
Would that have involved family disgrace at all?
Was the note necessary to cover up any suspicion the family may have had at that time about Montague Druitt being the Ripper? Hardly.
So why shouldn’t the note be taken at face value?

It is correct to say that there is no firm evidence that the note was found at Montague Druitt’s rooms at the school. Whether or not he temporarily moved to new lodgings after his dismissal and before he committed suicide will never be known. It depends on why he was dismissed and how long it was between his dismissal and his death or disappearance.
He could have walked out more or less immediately after his dismissal without clearing his room.
There is no evidence to suggest it was written after Druitt’s ‘flight’ from Blackheath. One would presume it was written after his dismissal, but I don’t think even that is clear.
I’m not sure that it matters that much.

According to William Druitt he ‘had deceased's things searched where he resided, and found a paper addressed to him’. (Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette, 5th January 1889)
So he didn’t find it himself. He implicated others in finding it. There were other potential witnesses to the content of the letter and its existence.
Unless he made that up – which would have been risky.

There is also this reference (Hampshire Advertiser, 12th January 1889)
‘The deceased had left a letter, addressed to Mr. Valentine, of the school, in which he alluded to suicide.’
This seems to have been a different letter. Where was this left? One would have to presume it was found with the other letter, and this might suggest that Druitt’s possessions were still at the school.
Nevertheless wherever it as found is it being suggested that William Druitt also forged this letter?
Is it suggested that William Druitt opened it even though it wasn’t addressed to him?

[Lechmere]

And the $60,000 question - why was he suspected at all?
He died at the right time for those who wanted a satisfactory conclusion in terms of melodrama and progression - after the glut (as if serial killers top themselves in such circumstances in the real world), and he was suitably middle class (but not too posh) so the established order had not been dumbfounded by some ill-bred local oik (as if serial killers in the real world tend to commute to areas well outside their comfort zone to kill).

He also had the wiff of sexual scandal about him - probably homosexual - and they were regarded as being capable of any depraved act.

[David Andersen]

Druitt was sacked on Friday 30th November by his friend and employer George Valentine. His serious offence might well have been a suicide attempt ( a serious offence in 1888 punishable by death). This would be consistent with him feeling 'like Mother'. His return rail ticket to Hammersmith was purchased the following day, Saturday 1st December. He might have stayed away from the school on that Friday night possibly at lodgings or an hotel. Sometime over the next three days he writes his note. He may well have written a note to Valentine but I doubt that it would have been written at, or left at the school. Valentine would have found the note and would not have formed the impression that Montague had gone abroad. Druitt was in Chiswick by that Saturday night possibly lodging with friends. We are told that he was last seen alive around the 3rd December. On that basis I suggest that the note was written during his brief stay in Chiswick and was thus found 'at the place he had resided.
The inquest was rushed and apart from PC Moulsom who gave evidence of searching the body, William Druitt seems to have been the only other witness. William did give perjured evidence when he declared that Montague was his only sibling. Evidence that Montague was identified from papers found on the body was refuted by PC Moulsom who was emphatic that no papers or letters of any kind were found on the body.
The introduction of their Mothers insanity to the proceedings ensured a swift and a not too searching inquest.
I suggest that any notes, along with the cheques and possibly other papers were found at the place where Druitt had last resided, and that was in Chiswick.
Having gone missing from his friends, around the 3rd December, his friends may well have alerted William, and possibly the Police. They were thus looking for Druitt at the time his body was found a little over three weeks later.
The inquest was flawed legally and we know that perjured evidence was given. Other evidence was in contention with PC Moulsoms evidence. It's all a bit iffey really.
Interesting coincidence though that Dr Diplock, the Coroner ended up living a few doors away from the house in Chiswick to which James Monro later lived and died.

[Lechmere]

Given the sketchy nature of the inquest reporting, it is a bit strong to suggest that William Druitt gave perjured evidence.
In any event what was the malign purpose behind saying that there were no other relatives? What did he possibly gain by saying that?
You don't know when he wrote the note nor that he stayed with friends at Chiswick.
Isn't the 3rd December a conjectural date based on Montague Druitt not having been seen by his friends for more than a week back from 11th December?
If he did stay with friends at Chiswick the letter would surely have been found there.
If he stayed in a hotel or lodgings somewhere then how would anyone have discovered that address?
The Friday Druitt referred to could have been a Friday further back in November for all anyone knows, not necessarily 30th November.
But if he was sacked on the Friday it is not too difficult to accept that the school allowed him to stay the Friday night and that he left on the Saturday - possibly leaving all his stuff and that he killed himself that day. That would also fit not having been seen by his friends for more than a week on 11th December.

[pinkmoon]

There is no way I would like it to be known that my mummy had gone funny and was now in the Looney bin that would have stigma today let alone 125 years ago but dear William had no problem letting this been know.By combining the fact that Monty had lost his job and his mummys illness gave the coroner a very good reason to say suicide and not pry to much .

[Lechmere]

The note and rocks in his pockets probably suggested suicide more than the mad mother. Yet the note also referred to the mother. Hence the need for William Druitt to explain.
Is it going to seriously be suggested that the note was forged?

[pinkmoon]

The note and rocks in his pockets probably suggested suicide more than the mad mother. Yet the note also referred to the mother. Hence the need for William Druitt to explain.
Is it going to seriously be suggested that the note was forged?

Yes but only if William was trying to cover up the real reason for the suicide

[Jonathan H]

Hocus Pocus

Sorry, but it is true to argue that the Druitt solution, albeit un-named and veiled, dominated the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras.

Because it did.

I appreciate how excruciating this is for some posters. It is not even saying that Druitt was the kiler, just thia his refracted image was ascendant in those years.

But ti won;t do, will it? Not even that can be conceded.

Why? Because it is a slippery slope? That maybe ... he was the culprit?

It is a measure of George Sims' enormous standing with the public that his opinion could trump that of two ex-field detectives (Sagar and Abberline), and a former Assistant Commissioner (Anderson). In 1913, the retiring Sir Melville Macmaghten confirmed the Ripper as a suicide (though not a medical man) and, in 1914, that it was a Gentile killer whom the police had little knowledge of until years later.

If you peruse the books and newspapers of the years between 1898 and 1914, you do see al lsorts of manifestations of 'Jack', but it is the toff medico that takes precedence over the rest.

It is also a measure of Sims' influence on the pop culture of the day that the "mad doctor" image persisted long, long after his death in 1922 (lasted even after Macnaghten's opaque attempts to retire this element of the profile in 1914). Lasts really to this day as the default image of the Ripper by illustrators.

Abberline's desperate advocacy of Chapman cut no ice because the m.o. was so different, as was pointed out at the time--including by Sims.

Sir Robert Anderson managed to soil himself with Humpty Dumpty-sized yoke in 1910, with all of his conceited prognostications about Parnell and a Jewish Ripper--and was mercilessly (and unfairly) lampooned by Sims, among many others inckluding England's Jewish leaders (Churchill had to defend the ex-chief's pension rights by damning him as an empty braggart).

That Anderson did know what he was talking about when it comes to the Whitechapel murders is a modern, revisionist notion. That does not make it automatically wrong, just that the only impression he left about the matter in his own time was a negative and unconvincing one (in his 1914 memoir, Macnaghten debunks his loathed former boss by denying there was a super-witness, denying that the chief suspect had ever been detained in an asylum, denying that the killer was anything but a 'simon Pure' Gentile who was furious at being interrupted with Stride by a trio of hard-working Hebrews, and so vented said fury in chalk, and denying that the killer's identity was known by 1889).

I subsrcribe to the theory that the note produced by William Druitt at the inquest was genuine, based on other sources. But theory it can only be as he had the motive to provide false evidence and testimony as he was scrambling to protect his clan from ruin. Say the note was real, and that the reporter misheard him (that he meant that he was the only living relative in attendance) that would still leave him misleading the coroner by not revealing the real reason for Montie's self-murder.

Ahh, this old chestnut: The timing of Druitt's suicide precluded him from being 'Jack the Ripper' as he died too early: eg. before Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, the Pinchin St. torso and, of course, Frances Coles in early 1891.

It is a measure of the Druitt family certainty that these subsequent murders, initially believed by the press, public and factions of the police to be committed by the same killer--especially McKenzie and Coles--still left them totally unmoved in their ghastly and shocking belief about one of their own.


I wondered how long it would take for the discredited modern paradigm to rear its head.

Not long as it turned out.

Can I have a go at performing this ahistorical hocus pocus myself:

Montie Druitt was a homosexual caught in the act at the school. He was sacked on November 30th 1888 and took his own life out of shame. He was all along mentally fragile, and this was an inherited family weakness. He died at the right time because police at the time knew Mary Jane Kelly to be the final victim of a madman who had satiated himself to the point of self-annihilation. Years later Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten, who never invesigated the ripepr murders first-hand, picked up some gossip from some dubious source and, without doing a bsic check of the information, slandered the dead Druitt by plpacing him on file as a Ripper. In defense of Macnaghten in the official version of his Report--his definitive, official pronouncement on the subject and all the rest, especially his memoirs, can be discounted--he clearly states that M. J. Druitt is a minor suspect against whom there was no hard evidence (not even its shadow). If 'Ripperology' has done anything it has at least cleared this tragic figure, who had been monstrously shanghaied into the mystery by rumour, by laziness by a top cop, and by the coincedental timing of his demise with the cessation of the crimes.

How'd I do?


No doubt, next I'll be informed that Dr. Tumblety was not a major police suspect for 'Jack' in 1888, or that Inspector Walter Andrews was really in Canada rustling up information for the anti-Parnellites ...

[David Andersen]

Given the sketchy nature of the inquest reporting, it is a bit strong to suggest that William Druitt gave perjured evidence.
In any event what was the malign purpose behind saying that there were no other relatives? What did he possibly gain by saying that?
You don't know when he wrote the note nor that he stayed with friends at Chiswick.
Isn't the 3rd December a conjectural date based on Montague Druitt not having been seen by his friends for more than a week back from 11th December?
If he did stay with friends at Chiswick the letter would surely have been found there.
If he stayed in a hotel or lodgings somewhere then how would anyone have discovered that address?
The Friday Druitt referred to could have been a Friday further back in November for all anyone knows, not necessarily 30th November.
But if he was sacked on the Friday it is not too difficult to accept that the school allowed him to stay the Friday night and that he left on the Saturday - possibly leaving all his stuff and that he killed himself that day. That would also fit not having been seen by his friends for more than a week on 11th December.

William did commit perjury at the inquest. That is a fact.
Once at Chiswick Montague did not use the return portion of his ticket which suggests he did not returnn. It is possible that Druitt stayed at the school until the morning after his dismissal, but given that it was for a serious offence it may not be so. And if he had stayed over Saturday why write a note to the man who was evidently at the school and who had just sacked him. He would have got the note which he evidently didnt since he assumed Druitt had left and gone abroad.
Also PC Moulsom was emphatic that no papers of any kind were found on Druitts body. Any papers found were found at the place Druitt had last resided presumably during his last few days of life.

[Jonathan H]

Yes, that's possible for sure.

I nonetheless subscbribe to the theory that Druitt was identified by the cheques found on his body as that they were from his brother's law firm in Bournemouth. Hence the very first accounts say that "friends", and then then a Mr W. H. Druitt has been contacted in that town. He came and identified the body (was he already in London?)

The cheques wre likely for Druitt's outstanding work in the civil case just completed that managed to get a Liberal Chief Justice to overturn the decision of a lower court on behalf of a disenfranchised Tory voter.

I think the note found among his things at the school was by Montie and alluded to suicide, on the basis that he could not face going into an asylum like their mother.

If the note was really by Montie then it means that the missing man could not have had his things searched before December 21st 1888. For this is the date when his cricket club sacked him for being AWOL; for going abroad and leaving no word of his return.

They would hardly have sacked a man who was believed to have been in such a state of mental distress that he had harmed himself.

This strongly suggests that the date of the Chiswick local paper is correct, and therefore modern interpretations that assume it must be wrong, must stand in for November 30th, are incorrect.

On Dec. 30th, Druitt was sacked for also being AWOL from the school (hence the lack of a face-saving resignation) or it refers to the date when William arrived, the day before the body surfaced. If he thought his brother was in Paris why come to the school? What had he learned to make him come to London and search his belongings?

[Lechmere]

My assumption was that Druitt left his stuff at his room at the school and left. The letter to valentine could have been left in a drawer or something and not noticed until William Druitt turned up and asked for the room to be searched.
We obviously only have a partial account of the inquest but there is no hint of another address.

[pinkmoon]

Why would Druitt confess to been jack the ripper if he wasn't ?could he have not actually been jack the ripper but one of the hundreds of people who sent hoax letters to the police and could this be what he confessed to.

[Jonathan H]

No, that is not possible or plausible.

[Lechmere]

Jonathan
Who were you replying to?