fairly good family

[Jonathan H]

Pinkmoon, about whether Druitt had confessed to being a hoax letter writer.

[Jonathan H]

Deconstructing 'Ripperology'?

I see that on another thread Simon Wood is preparing to publish a book that I presume will argue that there was no Ripper--no single killer of the so-called canonical five victims--and that 'Jack' and the subsequent police 'solutions' are just that; solutions plural, because these 'suspects' were nothing more than a propaganda merry-go-round.

Based on Simon's thoughtful and thorough articles I am eagerly expecting it to be a very provocative and entertaining work.

To be honest I do not expect 'Decontructing Jack' to persuade me that the theory I subscribe to--and advocate in my own book--is wrong, but you never know ...

I am with the tiny few at the other end of the spectrum of theories; who also do not believe it is a mystery, like Simon, but rather because it was solved by a police sleuth at the time:

Pittsburgh Press
6 July 1913

Following out his observation regarding the necessity of the ideal detective "keeping his mouth shut," Macnaughton (sic) carried into retirement with him knowledge of the identity of perhaps the greatest criminal of the age, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 by the fiendish mutilation and murder of seven women.

"He was a maniac, of course, but not the man whom the world generally suspected," said Sir Melville. "He committed suicide six months before I entered the department, and it is the one great regrets of my career that I wasn't on the force when it all happened. My knowledge of his identity and the circumstances of his suicide came to me subsequently. As no good purpose could be served by publicity, I destroyed before I left Scotland Yard every scrap of paper bearing on the case. No one else will ever know who the criminal was - nor my reasons for keeping silent."

What people miss is that if future police chiefs are not privy to the Ripper's entity did this also hold true of chiefs contempoary with Mac? Arguably it did (while his successor at C.I.D. never knew that the name was preserved in file, nor that he had been at New College, Oxford, with the suspect therein named!)

And here's an Australian source from 1951 that grasped the solution better
than whole books later written on the subject, partly because it was written eight years before Sir Melville's own propaganda-driven "memorandum" would derail understanding of the case--as solved by a hands-on chief with a superb memory--for decades to come:

‘The Mirror’ (W.A.) Oct 13th 1951

THE TRUTH ABOUT JACK THE RIPPER

As Told To 'The Mirror' by Ex-C.LB. Inspector HARRY MANN

'Many murders have achieved international notoriety, but in the publicity it evoked and depths of horror it plumbed, there was nothing in the annals of crime to equal the record of Jack the Ripper.

The story of Jack the Ripper has been dealt with in many newspaper articles in books and even in motion picture and radio features, and in the endeavor to add nausea upon nausea and terror upon terror the terrible drama has often been over-played. Result is that a tremendous amount of fiction has become mingled with the truth. ...

... Here again I refer to Sir Melville MacNaghten [sic], Scotland Yard chief. In Sir Melville's opinion the man's brain finally collapsed and he brought about his own destruction. He does not say why that opinion was held, but there is a hint that maybe the Yard held a little more information in the end than has ever been released.

Anyhow, this is Sir Melville's final summing up: 'I Incline to the belief that the Individual who held London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself from his home at certain times and that he committed suicide on or about November 10, 1888.'

His final murder was committed on November 9. Maybe the police found out after his death who he was; maybe he came of a respectable family, and after his violent end no good purpose would have been served and a lot of suffering on innocent people would have been inflicted by disclosing his identity. That dreadful secret is, I think, buried forever in a suicide's grave.'

Mann was absolutely right. The suicide's grave in which lay the reamins of the likely Ripper was in Dorset, but nothing in Macnaghten's or Sims' words and writings ever gave away this location (eg. Montague Druitt became Mortemer Slade in Guy Logan's penny-dreadful serial; the scion of a noble family from Yorkshire).

[miss marple]

There is a simple explanation as to why emphasis was laid on Monty's state of mind and his mother's state of mind. As has been said, suicide was a serious criminal offence [ if you were a failed suicide, you could be hanged for trying to take your life, oh ironies.] if you were deemed a suicide you could not be buried in consecrated ground, but if the balance of your mind was disturbed, that was the led out clause that enabled you to get a christian burial. The disgrace of suicide was worse than madness.
Monty as we know had a proper middle class burial.


Miss Marple

[Lechmere]

And William Druitt as a lawyer would have been aware of that.

[Jonathan H]

To Lechmere

William Druitt was also aware that he was with-holding from the inquest that he knew the real reason for his brother's suicide, and it had nothing to do with being sacked from the lesser of his two vocations (and almost certainly happened after he was already deceased).

Montie was, or believed he was--and convinced others he was--'Jack the Ripper'.

I appreciate that, here, has to be resisted at all costs, even at the cost of logic.

[Lechmere]

Jonathan
It is merely your conjecture that William Druitt knew, or even thought he knew or suspected in any way that his brother was Jack the Ripper.

[pinkmoon]

With the lack of information about Druitt all we can do is put our faith in sir Melville and apply some guess work I think at the very least we all have to accept that for some reason that we will never know that montys family thought he was jack the ripper.We will never know why his family suspected him but I think the fact that they suspected on its own is a powerfull argument to use in putting Monty forward as our killer.over the years we have been offerd a vast choice of ripper suspects some good some bad some plan ridiculous but nearly all fall down on one simple fact why did the murders stop and having a suspect who dies shortly after Kelly's murder can't be easily ignored.I think everyone on this excellent forum will have to admit that whoever committed these horrible crimes was not a full shilling so when we view the absolutely appalling photo of poor Mary Kelly and then we are asked to believe a suspect stopped killing and lived happily every after I think we have to look at somebody either dead soon after or incarcerated somewhere .One last thought about Monty no one from his family ever publicly denied the rumours about him that were kicking about soon after his suicide.

[Jonathan H]

To Lechmere

No, it is not. It is a theory based on primary sources.

Ultimately it is Sir Melville Macnaghten's opinion due to his doing his usual hands-on sleuthing, about a case moreover with which he was obsessed.

His opinion is backed by the family's secret's leak from Dorset regarding their deceased member in 1891, that reached, due to geographical and class proximity, the Tory M.P. Henry Farquharson--an Old Etonian like Mac.

The veiled version of William Druitt's secret knowledge is conveyed to us by George Sims writing several times in the 1900's about the "friends" who are trying to find the "doctor" who spoke of savaging harlots, but they are too late as he has already destroyed himself.

For an official file, albeit an unknown one until 1966, Macnaghten wrote that while M. J. Druitt might not be a doctor he was certainly erotically fulfilled by ultra-violence and that his "good family ... believed" he was 'Jack the Ripper'.

In the same retired chief's memoirs of 1914 he compresses disparate data to imply that the killer lived with his family, "his own people". While not literally true the reader is nonetheless guided towards the interpretation--that I think is accurate--that they were Macnaghten's source, albeit "some years after", for the "information" that led to a "conclusion" that "laid" to rest the "ghost" of the Whitechapel assassin.

Is it a contingent theory? Of course.

But the basis of most modern 'Ripperology', that the uncharacteristically hands-off Sir Melville was wrong about Druitt and wrong about the Druitt family's belief, is terminally unconvincing because it has to not only torture sources into saying things they are not saying, even more telling is that pertinent sources have to be airbrushed out of existence altogether.

Edwardians were authoritatively informed that the the Ripper case was not a mystery. In 1923 it was rebooted as a mystery that the police had allegedly never solved, and never claimed to have solved--the self-serving nostrums of competing top cop memoirs notwithstanding. This entirely false notion lasts to this day, nowhere more entrenched than among many Ripper buffs. Only here is the likeliest suspect a footnote, and sometimes not even that.

[Jonathan H]

To Pinkmoon

You keep repeating that we will never know why the Druitt family "believed".

Arguably we do know.

But I take it that you reject the theory that the "North Country Vicar'' of 1899 is writing about Montague Druitt?

[Jonathan H]

To Pinkmoon

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button too soon.

Montague Druitt did not kill himself at the right time but the wrong time.

This is one of the foundation blocks of so-called 'Ripperology' and, here, it is impossible to budge.

The Ripper murders continued after his suicide. It is extraordinary that the family did not grasp at these subsequent crimes to exonerate their deceased member among themselves. Yet they continued to "believe".

Also, there were no rumours swirling around Montie when he killed himself, about being the fiend. The family secret did not leak until about two years and two months later.

[The Good Michael]

There is no more evidence for Druitt being the murderer than for Kosminski or Tumblety. If all things are added up, they are 3 fairly equal suspects...2 rather with Tumblety trailing behind. So if anyone were to be honest about their attachment to one of these 3, they would have to say that in lieu of real evidence, they have a feeling that so and so is the murderer. Unfortunately, honesty with regards to only having a feeling rather than any hard evidence is seen as a weakness. What is done instead is to thrust non-evidence down our throats and call it a day. Doesn't anyone get tired of it? If it isn't Druitt, it's Hutchinson. If it isn't Hutchinson, it's Bury. If it isn't Bury, it's Cross. There is no evidence. There is only feeling. This feeling comes from so many external sources such as books, articles, film, drunken conversation over beer...that it's all meaningless. It's a mishmash of others' thoughts that you somehow concatenate into your own. And yet we plod on, trying to defend and promote our...clients as if to let go of their hands would be to send them into oblivion where they probably, rightly belong.

This Druitt stuff is becoming one of the worst for feeling over evidence. So yesterday, so boring.

Cheers,

Mike

[John Wheat]

To Michael

I agree to a large extent with what you are saying. I too have become bored with the endless pontification about suspects that have very little to suggest they were the Ripper. And I class Druitt in that category. I've also become bored with the wild claims that are made with regard to many suspects.

Cheers John

[Jonathan H]

To the GM

Actually let me tell you what is really boring--unbelievably, excruciatingly tedious--is that you cannot propose Montague Druitt as the likeliest murderer on a 'Jack the Ripper' site without provoking a visceral and loathsome reaction from some quarters.

Essentially told to Phuck Off, from even a Druitt thread.

Of course no attempt is made to deal with the specific arguments proposed, just a lot of warmed-over cliches about there being no hard evidence against any suspect (Macnaghten arguably knew about Dr. Tumblety and Kosminski and he implicitly rejected them).

This of course misunderstands the difference between evidence utilized in a criminal trial--not even possible when Macnaghten investigated Druitt as the latter had been deceased for over two years--and historical evidence, which produces conclusions that must remain provisional.

Druitt was the solution of a police sleuth of the day. He shared that solution, albeit in veiled form, with the public. Later these two elements of the subject were forgotten and never really rediscovered in the post-war era.

That's a relatively new theory/interpretation--but it's the drowned not-a-doctor so it has to be quashed, denied and ignored.

It begs the question--why are you so frightened?

[Lechmere]

Jonathan
Theory - conjecture - semantics.
It is your theory that William Druitt knew or thought he knew Montague Druitt was the ripper at the time of the inquest. It is your theory that he misled the jury.
It is based on Sims' misleading accounts that you claim Macnaghten deliberately garbled to make them deniable.

[The Good Michael]

To the GM

Actually let me tell you what is really boring--unbelievably, excruciatingly tedious--is that you cannot propose Montague Druitt as the likeliest murderer on a 'Jack the Ripper' site without provoking a visceral and loathsome reaction from some quarters.

Essentially told to Phuck Off, from even a Druitt thread.

Of course no attempt is made to deal with the specific arguments proposed, just a lot of warmed-over cliches about there being no hard evidence against any suspect (Macnaghten arguably knew about Dr. Tumblety and Kosminski and he implicitly rejected them).

This of course misunderstands the difference between evidence utilized in a criminal trial--not even possible when Macnaghten investigated Druitt as the latter had been deceased for over two years--and historical evidence, which produces conclusions that must remain provisional.

Druitt was the solution of a police sleuth of the day. He shared that solution, albeit in veiled form, with the public. Later these two elements of the subject were forgotten and never really rediscovered in the post-war era.

That's a relatively new theory/interpretation--but it's the drowned not-a-doctor so it has to be quashed, denied and ignored.

It begs the question--why are you so frightened?

All of this proves my point. An emotional response that shows feeling is the driving factor in suspectology. And it isn't about just you. You know that. your outrage stems from personal attachment to Druitt. I understand that.

Mike