What makes Druitt a viable suspect?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Simon,

Why would the family be at a loss what to do with their suspicions? How could they have possibly learned if they were right or wrong? Ask Macnaghten? Hello, did you suspect MJD was the Ripper? I very much doubt it..

Perhaps they hoped that someone like Majendie might have been able to deal with the situation in some way whilst avoiding a scandal?

Why can't you bring yourself to believe that Macnaghten simply looked back through the records, found a person who conveniently died at about the right time, wrote a memorandum he thought nobody would ever read, purposely got the facts wrong so nobody could positively attribute guilt to an innocent person, leaked his bogus information to a well-respected author [Griffiths] before writing yet another version of his memorandum which his daughter partly typed-up for reasons yet unknown?

For one thing he could certainly have gone back through the records and found someone that fit his criteria but would have been a more likely candidate than an innocuous Barrister/Schoolteacher from a respectable upper class family. Why pick someone who, if someone did look into him, might easily have had a cast iron alibi? Why pick someone related by marriage to one of his best friends? Why not just leave it at Kosminski and Ostrog? It doesn’t add up for me.

[PaulB]

Hi Simon
nice post but wait for Paul beg to ask where is your evidence

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Why would I ask Simon that, Trevor? Simon doesn't have any evidence. It's just supposition, and only one of several possible ways in which the family might have inadvertantly revealed their anxieties. Any chance of you actually answering my questions?

[Wickerman]

Hi Herlock,

Why would the family be at a loss what to do with their suspicions? How could they have possibly learned if they were right or wrong? Ask Macnaghten? Hello, did you suspect MJD was the Ripper? I very much doubt it.

Why can't you bring yourself to believe that Macnaghten simply looked back through the records, found a person who conveniently died at about the right time, wrote a memorandum he thought nobody would ever read, purposely got the facts wrong so nobody could positively attribute guilt to an innocent person, leaked his bogus information to a well-respected author [Griffiths] before writing yet another version of his memorandum which his daughter partly typed-up for reasons yet unknown?

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon.

There's a saying that goes something like, "the cure is worse than the disease".
That is a terrible plot Simon.

[Abby Normal]

Simon,




Perhaps they hoped that someone like Majendie might have been able to deal with the situation in some way whilst avoiding a scandal?



For one thing he could certainly have gone back through the records and found someone that fit his criteria but would have been a more likely candidate than an innocuous Barrister/Schoolteacher from a respectable upper class family. Why pick someone who, if someone did look into him, might easily have had a cast iron alibi? Why pick someone related by marriage to one of his best friends? Why not just leave it at Kosminski and Ostrog? It doesn’t add up for me.

exactly herlock.
lets face it-he probably wrote the memo expecting a response from superiors after the cutbush article, and honestly just wrote down his thoughts on the matter. He includes one suspect that was apparently known to police-koz, and a couple more, including druitt which he heard more than likely about from a friend/acquaintance (private info). And the more he thought about it, and maybe including some other evidence , he simply thought he was the best suspect for the ripper. Druitt was already dead and the ripper murders were over-so what else could he do anyway?

I guess the question I would have is-did he think the C5 ended with Kelly (and not include McKenzie) because his favored suspect was already dead or did he already have the C5 only in his mind as ripper victims and that bolstered his idea that Druitt was the ripper?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Paul,

I seem to have touched a nerve.

I merely listed a perfectly reasonable series of events for Macnaghten.

You ask for evidence of what I believe.

Where's the evidence for what you believe?

BTW Have you yet made the move?

Regards,

Simon

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jon,

It's a much better plot than any of yours.

Regards,

Simon

[Simon Wood]

Hi Herlock,

Reputations are fragile things, so why are you inventing all these infernally complex maybe/perhaps/possibly family scenarios to avoid a scandal which they would never have allowed to happen in the first place.

Regards,

Simon

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

Reputations are fragile things, so why are you inventing all these infernally complex maybe/perhaps/possibly family scenarios to avoid a scandal which they would never have allowed to happen in the first place.

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon

How could they have not allowed a scandal to occur? What control could they have exerted over Monty if he was guilty?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Herlock,

Buttoned their lips.

If Macnaghten didn't find out about MJD until some years after he became a police officer, how did the family first come to believe/suspect he was the Whitechapel murderer?

Regards,

Simon

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Simon,

We have no way of knowing how or when the family came to suspect Monty. It didn’t have to be at the time of the murders. For me the question is still - why did Macnaghten pick Druitt? He wasn’t compelled to. He would have had easier less problematical alternatives.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

It's a much better plot than any of yours.

Regards,

Simon

Lol!

I don't recall spelling out any plots, but never mind tou·ché

[harry]

No one has claimed the family didn't have suspicions.What I say is that it is the only indication that anyone had suspicions about Druitt.As we do not know what was the nature of those suspicions,how can we evaluate those suspicions?Does the unknown equate to reasonable cause to suspect?

[Simon Wood]

We've only got Macnaghten's word for it that there were any family suspicions.

[harry]

Exactly Simon,that is the first consideration,and that too is open to suspicion.Some will suspect one way,others another.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Herlock,

Why did Macnaghten pick Druitt?

Because there was nothing problematical about him. He was dead. He obligingly committed suicide at approximately the right time, although not "in bloodstained clothes" . . . "on the night of his last murder" [Farquharson, 1892], nor "at the time of the Miller's Court murder [MM, 1894]." And he was not "a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved women of the East End . . ." [North Country Vicar, 1899].

Macnaghten picked Druitt. Anderson picked the Polish Jew. Two out of three from the memorandum, both police officers ignoring Ostrog who, in October 1894, received £10 compensation from the police for proving that he was in a French jail at the time of the Whitechapel murders.

It isn't rocket science.

Macnaghten is not to be trusted.

Regards,

Simon