fairly good family

[jmenges]

Why haven't I ever seen a convincing argument put forth countering Jonathan's theories (and Andy's before him) that would forever eliminate Druitt from being a top murder suspect and send him into oblivion? I think the reason is that there are truths in these arguments and I for one read Jonathan's posts with keen interest, although he is forced to repeat himself over and over again, causing the thread to feel like one on Hutchinson. I can't see how, given the historical record and more modern research thats occurred, one can say there is "very little" to suggest he was (or thought he was and convinced his family he was) the Ripper.

JM

[mklhawley]

Why haven't I ever seen a convincing argument put forth countering Jonathan's theories (and Andy's before him) that would forever eliminate Druitt from being a top murder suspect and send him into oblivion? I think the reason is that there are truths in these arguments and I for one read Jonathan's posts with keen interest, although he is forced to repeat himself over and over again, causing the thread to feel like one on Hutchinson. I can't see how, given the historical record and more modern research thats occurred, one can say there is "very little" to suggest he was (or thought he was and convinced his family he was) the Ripper.

JM

I second that, JM.

Sincerely,

Mike

[pinkmoon]

The whole debate about Druitt can be summed up in one simple fact sir Melville chose him over all the other names that had been known to the police wether he chose the right one we will never know but the fact he chose him must carry a lot of weight .

[Lechmere]

I always think it is slightly silly for anyone to get hot and bothered about ‘Ripperological suspectology’. To a very real extent a large part of what ‘Ripperology’ is about is as a whodunit.
Some suspects may be more realistic than others. Some are argued over more aggressively or passionately or emotionally than others - depending on the personalities involved no doubt.
Anyone who doesn’t like this aspect isn’t forced to read or partake.
There are whole sections on here that I don’t read.

It’s not feasible that a counter argument could be put forward to forever eliminate Druitt as a suspect. That would require some sort of hard evidence such as a newspaper report stating that he was elsewhere on one of the nights for example.

However, there are numerous a priori factors that make Druitt a difficult suspect to take seriously now – as opposed to back then.
He was middle class and lived in a different district of London. He had no known connections to the East End and cannot be connected to any crime scene or victim.
His cricketing schedule makes it difficult for him to have committed two of the murders.
It is difficult to picture him in Bucks Row and making his escape to Blackheath, the same goes for Hanbury Street or Berner Street.
His candidacy seems to speak more of a need for a middle class culprit to satisfy the psychological requirement for a skilful adversary who was a more worthy opponent than a common oik, and someone with a sensitive conscience buried somewhere beneath the bestiality, that had to be wrestled with and which fatally horrified itself with that fearful glut at Miller’s Court.
Such motivations have no place in a serious attempt to find a serial killer but I can see that it would appeal to someone like Macnaghten.
Jonathan’s theory is based on the premise that Macnaghten is a puck like figure, playing games and tricks, pulling the wool over the eyes of his colleagues and the Government. It has Macnaghten creating a conspiracy involving numerous people all of whom obligingly remained sufficiently silent.
The Tory MP, various family members, Sims, the vicar, the school.
It suggests Macnaghten was motivated by a desire to protect the Conservative Party, yet it isn’t explained how the fingering of Montague Druitt as the Ripper – an otherwise rather uninteresting school teacher cum barrister - could affect the Conservative Party. And after all a Conservative MP was one of the people mouthing off about him.
The Victorian establishment was not shy of turning on its ‘own’ when they transgressed their codes of behaviour.
I would suggest that this interpretation of Macnaghten and his behaviour is fantastical.
I don’t doubt that Macnaghten harboured suspicions that Druitt was guilty but I don’t think he was ever a serious suspect and he wheeled him out to flatter his own vanity but was careless about the details, partly because he was unsure about the details.
I think it is very likely that Druitt was a homosexual and that lies behind the accusations.

[The Good Michael]

Why haven't I ever seen a convincing argument put forth countering Jonathan's theories (and Andy's before him) that would forever eliminate Druitt from being a top murder suspect and send him into oblivion? I think the reason is that there are truths in these arguments and I for one read Jonathan's posts with keen interest, although he is forced to repeat himself over and over again, causing the thread to feel like one on Hutchinson. I can't see how, given the historical record and more modern research thats occurred, one can say there is "very little" to suggest he was (or thought he was and convinced his family he was) the Ripper.

I don't disagree with this, but the same can be said of Kosminski and Tumblety...Kelly as well. They are all viable because they can't be disproved, but what keeps them in the fore isn't evidence of any of them being the murderer. It's the gut feeling that suspectologists have that 'their guy' did it. That is what elevates the suspect and has nothing to do with real evidence. It's more to do with lack of evidence against as you just stated at the beginning of your post. And that's combined with an emotional connection. It's not dissimilar to soccer parents wanting their kid to be played in the big match, though the coach hasn't selected them, because they know their kid and believe him/her to be good enough to play. The reality may be, and usually is, completely different.

Jonathan always makes a decent case and is great at creating plausibility. That isn't enough. The cement that holds the case together, as ever, and not with Jonathan alone, is primordial faith.

Mike

[Jonathan H]

To my namesake Menges, and MikeH

Thanks for the judicious support, which I do not confuse with agreement. We do not agree, but it has never led to rancor between us.

To Lechmere

I appreciate that you, alone, are trying to engage with the elements of the theory.

I disagree with you that I am arguing that Mac's first priority was to protect the Tory Party, in 1891 the incumbent government.

It wasn't.

Fictionalizing Montie was done to protect the Druitt family because that was typical of Macnaghten's compassionate and discreet style. He also used the moment to enhance the image of Scotland Yard (something that William Le Queux saw through in 1899, and said so) by pretending for fifteen years, via proxies, that the Yard was about to arrest the "mad doctor" (he conceded in his memoirs this was not so).

The reason Macnaghten did not simply keep his mouth shut about Druitt is because of the 'North Country Vicar' revealing the tale--in his case openly fictionalized--in 1899.

Mac got in first with Griffiths and then a few days later Sims body-slammed the Vicar.

Convincing or not, plausible or not, the above is the theory in a nutshell.

Also, upper crust types such as Mac and Tatcho deciding what to reveal, and not reveal about hot information they held came as easy as breathing to that class. I think you distort such prankish discretion by ascribing such a grand word as 'conspiracy' to winks, whispers and chuckles in a gentleman's club.

As for Montie Druitt being gay, well all I can say it is a bit rich that you accuse me of making stuff up or at least creating a fantastical overlay to the mundane when you propose a deus ex machina that has no basis in the primary sources whatsoever.

Mac wrote clearly what he meant by sexual insanity in 1914, and it was not that the suspect was gay but that Druitt gained erotic pleasure from acts of extreme violence from being 'Jack the Ripper'. Ergo he was sexually insane. But being the Ripper came first, the motive, or lack of one second. You are putting the cart before the horse (so did Mac in his reports where the false impression was given that Druitt was not arrested due to a lack of evidence.

Here is Sir Basil Thomson in the second edition of his memoirs, totally oblivious that a man he went to Oxford with was named in a Yard report by his predecessor as a Ripper suspect--or that the Mac Report even existed in the archive.

Instead Thompson had to use Major Griffiths from 1898 to find out about this alleged trio of suspects (he wrongly assumes, as many did, that the PC witness was Thompson, even though that was from 1891 and the Coles murder):

‘After the last of these murders the police had brought their investigations to the point of suspecting one of three homicidal lunatics. One was a Polish Jew reported by Police Constable Thompson, the one police officer who caught sight of the man in Mitre Court; the second was an insane Russian doctor who had been a convict both in England and in Siberia. The man was reported to be in the habit of carrying surgical knives in his pockets. At the time of the outrages he was in hiding; at any rate he could not be found. The third suspect was also a doctor on the borderland of insanity. His friends had grave doubts him, but the evidence was insufficient for detaining him with any hope of obtaining a conviction. After the last of these crimes in Miller’s Court on November 9th, 1888, this man disappeared and seven weeks later his body was found floating in the Thames, the medical evidence being that it had been in the water for a month. Whether this identification was accurate or not there is a strong presumption that “Jack the Ripper” died or was put under restraint after the last of the murders.’

Lechmere, you can say that it is a fantasy. That is your right, but all I can see is Macnaghten misleading people when he wants to. He misled Griffiths into believing that the doctor was a suspect whilst alive, and Thomson was so misled too (Le Queux was not, calling the story a transparent "excuse")

In his 1914 memoirs Mac essentially admitted that the un-named Druitt was not a suspect whilst alive, or for years after he killed himself--and this matches the sources between 1888 to March 1st 1891 (the date when Sims suddenly reverses himself about the coffee-stall witness, eg. that he really does look like 'Jack' but only in one picture when younger, and haggard from poor health.)

Therefore his report(s) are based on deceit, to discreetly avoid admitting that Druitt was long dead before he became a suspect.

If he is not being deceitful, why does he do this? Why did he mislead the Home Office (albeit it was never sent) and Griffiths, into believing that they were not way too late to investigate this suspect?

If I'm wrong, show me how I'm wrong, and I mean the specifics. Because it is the specifics, the nuts and bolts that so many secondary sources (often excellent ones) that get it wrong--and are unaware that they are wrong--that led me, rightly or wrongly, to my revisionist opinion.

To TGM

When you drag out this cliche of saying the person is becoming emotional this is just classic passive-aggressive behaviour ("so yesterday, so boring", etc.) that prevents a person from defending themselves when attacked.

Your spite, I'm guessing, is based on putting so much of your mental energy into the innocence of Druitt and equally into the incompetence of Macnaghten. To you they are footnotes to the story and mystery of 'Jack the Ripper', and discredited ones at that.

If that is you opinion, that's fine with me. I don't agree, but if that is your interpretation your welcome to it.

So why the spite that would shame a fourteen year old girl?

I think because it terrifies you, as I know it does others, that for years and years and years you might have completely misunderstood a subject in which you are so heavily, dare I say the word, emotionally invested.

That the 'footnotes' might be the core of the tale.

By the way, there's no such thing as 'suspectology'. It's a semantic-slang trick to put in a box inconvenient sources that upset the edifice, an edifice that may only be a mirage, eg. the police never solved it, if it was solved they never shared the solution with the public, if they did solve it and did share it with the public, well ... the solution was rubbish.

Really? Can you be so sure?

[Lechmere]

But you claim the 'police' didn't solve it - one policeman secretly solved it!

[Jonathan H]

Yep, that's true, Lechmere.

Macnaghten's solution was definitely not a police solution--though he had Sims falsely claim it was, but in Mac's 1913 press conference and his 1914 memoirs he implied it was not, and it wasn't--and was therefore not an institutional solution.

I am sure that if Sir Robert Anderson gave it any thought at all, about what Sims was writing, he assumed that this was a garbled version of Dr. Tumblety (as did, I think, Jack Littlechild).

This is partly what has misled post-war writers and researchers.

eg. The notion that Mac and Bob sat around discussing the case and coming to a sort of gentlemanly agreement to disagree over opposing suspects is a modern construct, arguably a completely fallacious one.

As fallacious as the notions that Druitt was only suspected because he 'died at the right time'; that we have no idea, whatsoever, why his family "believed" he was the killer; or that Macnaghten repeats the 'Drowned Doctor' hustle in his memoirs.

But what about the rest of what I wrote, Lechmere?

You had countered that it is a fantasy that Macnaghten deliberately misled people over this case.

Is that so?

Let me show you something.

This is the only extant mention of the second and final version of Macnaghten's report, until 1966. It is from Sims-Dagonet's “Mustard and Cress” column of April 17th 1910 (found by Chris Phillips):

“It was only the other day that the late esteemed head of the C.I.D. caused a storm of indignation among the King’s Jewish subjects by stating that

JACK THE RIPPER

was a Jew, and that the Jews knew who he was and assisted him to evade capture. The statement went beyond ascertained facts.

The mad Polish Jew, to whom Sir Robert refers, was only one of three persons who were each strongly suspected of being the genuine Jack. The final official record, which is in the archives of the Home Office, leaves the matter in doubt between the Polish Jew, who was afterwards put in a lunatic asylum, a Russian doctor of vile character, and an English homicidal maniac, one Dr.-----, who had been in a lunatic asylum. In these circumstances it was certainly indiscreet of Sir Robert to plump for the Polish Jew, and to imply that many of the Jewish community in the East End were accessories after the fact. …

ANDERSON’S FAIRY TALES.

There is no truth to the rumour that in the course of further romantic revelations to be expected from Sir Robert we shall learn; … The name of the eminent Jewish financiers who assisted Jack the Ripper to evade arrest.’

Why did Sims write that the final report was in the Home Office archives?

It was never sent there.

Macnaghten wrote it and he knew that it was never sent there because he did not send it, as it was in the Yard's files (unknown and unread)

Why did Macnaghten and Sims--albeit in a bitchy/backhanded way--to some extent come to his loathed predecessor's rescue by conceding that the Polish Jew was the equal of the mad, English doctor suspect?

In the 'Aberconway' draft, that formed the basis of Griffiths' bit, the drowned, English doctor is clearly ascendant. Why did Macnaghten not have Sims allude that version, as he certainly did in 1903 in his fightback against Abberline?

If you say because he wanted the the contents of the more accurate filed version to be promoted, why did he then have Sims claim it was a definitive document of state, archived in the Home Office--when it wasn't, and he knew it wasn't?

[Lechmere]

Because Macnaghten was a conceited little man, one of those who never got over his public school days - the best days of his life, after which everything went downhill and was unfulfilled.
He dropped semi incorrect hints to his buddy, that he knew couldn't be countered, to puff his own vanity.
The hints were semi incorrect because he genuinely didn't know that much, and some were told to give more credence to his garbage.
Don't forget Ostrog was part of his troika.

[Jonathan H]

OK, Lech', that's an answer.

It does not dissuade me, for what my dissent is worth. We will have to agree to disagree.
.
Macnaghten arguably had a minor fixation on Ostrog because he was there at Eton, as an Old Boy, on the very day that the Russian stole from his beloved school.

The chief knew the criminal was not a doctor and not insane--and he knew, just after the official version was written, that the hapless thief was in France at the time of the murders (Sims, 1907).

In 'Aberconway', arguably written in 1898, Mac had fun taking a private revenge against this pest for in that document he could be mad, and a doctor and his whereabouts never ascertained. He could project this lie onto the public where Ostrog the con man would be part of Macnaghten's semi-con forever.

Whereas Mac knew Ostrog was not a medical man--just as he knew Druitt was not one either.

[Lechmere]

So Macnaghten deliberately misled his colleagues and was willing to mislead government out of some Etonian grudge?
If that were the case (and he wasn't just a vain buffoon) then his reputation should be posthumously degraded.

[Jonathan H]

To L

Posthumously .... degraded! You're kidding, right?

You're too late, mate.

Macnaghten has been 'posthumously degraded' for decades in most Ripper books (have you read Cornwell?). It is one of the cornerstones of so-called 'Ripperology' (Rumbelow, Begg and Evans are important exceptions).

It is as if you are channelling the pious spirit of Sir Robert Anderson, or perhaps Sir Charles Warren, who had Mac 'fired' before he even started.

Don't go near the big historial figures then, as they will certainly not meet your stringent moral standards:

FDR, Churchill, JFK, Gandhi, Lennon, Lenin, Thatcher (see new revelations about one of her her top advisors), et. al.

Personally, I think Macnaghten did a brilliant job of balancing competing pressures and interests, of keeping 'everyone satisfied' as Fred Wensley put it, and he was, deservedly, a beloved and admired figure--even among some of the criminal class whom he helped to go straight when they came out of prison.

Except here, where to so many he is nothing, or a vain buffoon, or hopelessly ignorant, or, most hilariously off-track of all, a Victorian homophobe.

If you want to see him degraded, just immerse yourself in thousands of postings on this site.

[Lechmere]

Jonathan
It is your portrayal of him which, if accurate, should lead to his career being postumously degradedfor gross misconduct in deliberately misleading his colleagues in the aftermath of a very serious multiple murder investigation and for intending to mudkeadvthe government he reported to. His motivation was little more than devilment, often, mixed with a desire to get back at someone for an offence against Eton (namely Ostrog).

[Lechmere]

And it doesn't make Macnaghten a homophobe any more than you could accuse almost any random person of the period of being a homophobe.
Furthermore he was merely reporting what the family thought of Montague Druitt's proclivities.

[Jonathan H]

I respectfaully dissent from your denunciation.

Your innocence about office politics, and just politics is truly something to behold.

I think that Macnaghten, with good reason, felt he could not trust Anderson with the Dorset solution; trust him that is not to blab, and so he handed him the chronic masturbator and falsely told him two things about aaron Kosminski: that he was sectioned in March '89 and that he was deceased soon after that (sure enough his boss began bragging about solving the case to Major Griffiths in 1895--who was less than impressed).

Mac protected the Yard from [potentially] an ugly libel suit, he protected the Druitt family from ruin and he enhanced Scotland Yard's rep as having nearly caught the monster (this bit of propaganda was retired by his own memoirs, but in the long run the police, all police, were removed from having come anywhere near to identifying the true killer--a foundation stone of so-called 'Ripperology').

An egomaniac would have put it about that he had solved the case, but the ccheerful, modest and compassionate Macnaghten allowed the entire Yard to take credit--which meant Anderson too--until his memoirs, when he settled that bitter score.

I'll finish with how a contemporary described Macnaghten, the super-cop who arguably solved the mystery of the Ripper--from Fred Wensley's memoirs:

‘... I knew how it was that this tall, charming-mannered man had managed to win and keep the respect and devotion of all kinds of men in all ranks of service. With fine tact he said just the right things in just the right way to impress a young detective officer, and asked me to accompany him to the house. ... Ever after, Sir Melville showed almost a paternal interest in my work. No doubt he gave the same impression to others, for he always had the knack of drawing the best from a man. Even that little intimate touch “Fred” instead of the official “Mr Wensley” on occasions when we were alone together in after years, when he had become assistant commissioner, was calculated to give a human and inspiring tone to our relationship. He was a very great gentleman, and I owe much to him.'

I also found this in my research that, to my knowledge, has never been published in a secondary source before, from 'The Sunday Post' , May 15th, 1921, "by One Who Knew Him":

“MACNAGHTEN OF THE YARD”
BRITAIN’S GREATEST SLEUTH AND THE MYSTERIES HE SOLVED

‘Sir Melville Macnaghten was the man who built Scotland Yard. He revolutionized all the methods for the detection of crime, built up the finest detective system in the world, and became the terror of wrong-doers even in the most remote corners of the world. … There was nothing of the detective of fiction about him. He was better than that. He had all the scientific methods of crime detection at his finger ends, and combined this with a wonderful mathematical brain, which could work out problems which few men would be capable of solving. … In the square at the back of Scotland Yard there was a long grey car which during his regime at the Yard became famous. When the wires hummed by day and night with news of a big crime in any part of London, you would see the long grey car steal out quietly out with the tall, keen-eyed man sitting in the tonneau [open back seat] with one or two of the most famous detectives beside him. Then you would know that something terrible had happened, and that in the morning the country would be ringing with the news of great doings. It was Mac of the Yard on the way to investigate a crime while the clue was warm.’


If you think this man is appalling, Lech', that's your right, but I sure don't.