What makes Druitt a viable suspect?

[Trevor Marriott]

Simon.

Mac. could have written a rebuttal of the Cutbush article without mentioning any other suspects. Why write any lies at all?

What he wrote at the time he believed to be true.

Believing and having evidence to back up a belief are two different things. There is to much belief nowadays put into the beliefs of senior officers from back then. To many people are too ready to readily accept these beliefs by stating they were there so they must have know something, that counts for nothing without anything to back it up

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[Sam Flynn]

Yes, the Victorian upper class had a reputation for covering things up.

Maybe so, but I don't see why Macnaghten should have felt constrained to cover this up. As to besmirching the family: (a) they themselves allegedly believed he was the killer - a "fact" that was clearly out there or MM wouldn't have heard of it; (b) the Druitts were hardly major public figures, so it's not as if this news would rock the Establishment; and (c) the Memorandum clearly states that Druitt was insane, which would explain (or even partly excuse) his behaviour without dragging the rest of the family down.

[PaulB]

I dont need to, or want to for that matter keep stating that same facts over and over again that point to the contents of this memo being unsafe to now rely on. I dont see what your argument is, do you not accept these facts as being unsafe? He is the main protagonist who by what he wrote in the memo has been responsible for every book and every documentary made that has gone down the misleading 5 and 5 only victims.

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Macnaghten's conclusions were based on the content of private information. That information could have implicated Druitt in five murders and five only. This would make Macnaghten's statement perfectly explicable. Also, you don't know that those five weren't the only Whitechapel murder victims to have been killed by the same hand. So, you are making judgements based on what you assume to be correct and what you think Macnaghten got wrong. That's not something that makes the memoranda unreliable.

[rjpalmer]

Trevor -- If we are supposed to treat a Chief Constable with "caution," how should we treat

William Sanford Lawton?

[Herlock Sholmes]

There is to much belief nowadays put into the beliefs of senior officers from back then. To many people are too ready to readily accept these beliefs by stating they were there so they must have know something, that counts for nothing without anything to back it up

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I think that people are too willing to assume that these senior police office were all moustache twiddling Victorian villains or alternatively credulous inbred’s. We should credit them with at least the assumption of honesty unless we can prove to the contrary (and a couple of ‘errors’ is not enough to condemn someone.)

[Herlock Sholmes]

Trevor -- If we are supposed to treat a Chief Constable with "caution," how should we treat

William Sanford Lawton?

As scrupulously honest and rigorously trustworthy I assume? As far as I can recall there was no evidence that Feigenbaum was in London at the time of the murders was there? So why is Feigenbaum a suspect and yet Druitt is merely a person of interest. Why is a Lawyer more trustworthy than Mac?

[PaulB]

Believing and having evidence to back up a belief are two different things. There is to much belief nowadays put into the beliefs of senior officers from back then. To many people are too ready to readily accept these beliefs by stating they were there so they must have know something, that counts for nothing without anything to back it up

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An informed voice from the past speaks for an awful lot, whether what it says can be corroborated or not and the fact is that corroboration may no longer exist. When that happens, you turn to other ways of estimating the voice's reliability, and you base your conclusions on the results. Saying there is no corroboration is therefore a problem the voice presents, it is not a reason for discarding the voice, for saying the voice 'counts for nothing'. You keep putting up problems, both genuine and of your own making, as if they are evidence upon which conclusions can be based. They're not.

[Trevor Marriott]

I think that people are too willing to assume that these senior police office were all moustache twiddling Victorian villains or alternatively credulous inbred’s. We should credit them with at least the assumption of honesty unless we can prove to the contrary (and a couple of ‘errors’ is not enough to condemn someone.)

You have to bear in mind some of these senior officers were brought into the police service with no previous police experience, they had no practical policing experience and no previous investigative skills. They probably would have believed just about anything anybody said. Thats why we have the real practical police officers who worked directly on the case having no knowledge of what these plastic police officers said in later years, as Abberline and Reid did just that in the press in later years.

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[Trevor Marriott]

As scrupulously honest and rigorously trustworthy I assume? As far as I can recall there was no evidence that Feigenbaum was in London at the time of the murders was there? So why is Feigenbaum a suspect and yet Druitt is merely a person of interest. Why is a Lawyer more trustworthy than Mac?

Because there is additional circumstantial evidence to support what his lawyer says and a newspaper report with him saying it. There is nothing nothing to support what MM says in the memo

"On my next visit to the Tombs I asked him whether he had not been in London at various times during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders. 'Yes, I was,' he answered.

You should read the full chapter in my book on Feigenbaum

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[Herlock Sholmes]

Because there is additional circumstantial evidence to support what his lawyer says and a newspaper report with him saying it. There is nothing nothing to support what MM says in the memo

"On my next visit to the Tombs I asked him whether he had not been in London at various times during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders. 'Yes, I was,' he answered.

You should read the full chapter in my book on Feigenbaum

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If he was lying in the first place, and you can’t prove that he wasn’t, then his story could have been repeated a thousand times in the thousand different newspapers in it still wouldn’t provide validation.

[Trevor Marriott]

An informed voice from the past speaks for an awful lot, whether what it says can be corroborated or not and the fact is that corroboration may no longer exist. When that happens, you turn to other ways of estimating the voice's reliability, and you base your conclusions on the results. Saying there is no corroboration is therefore a problem the voice presents, it is not a reason for discarding the voice, for saying the voice 'counts for nothing'. You keep putting up problems, both genuine and of your own making, as if they are evidence upon which conclusions can be based. They're not.

Informed voice he was not even in the police when the murders occurred all he writes in the Memo is hearsay from 6 years previous there is no corroboration to anything he writes. He wrote it under pressure in 1894 following the sun article on Cutbush. Pressure from above I would suggest.

Far to many opinions in Ripperolgy by senior officers which are not supported by those who actually were directly involved in the investigation, and therefore what Anderson, Swanson and MM and others said in later years is unsafe to rely on. Cant you understand this ?

Ask yourself why is it that the senior officers and the rank and file officers were not singing from the same songsheet?

Anderson and Swanson mention this seaside ID yet MM makes no mention yet he was Swansons immediate superior

Anderson mentions a witness there were no witnesses to any of the murders so how could a witness identify the killer ?

No witness name was ever mentioned

No christian name of the prime suspect Aaron Kosminski was ever written in any of the documents that any of these officers were involved in writing, and no rank and file officer knew of this mythical ID. So who took the suspect to the seaside home did Anderson and swanson take it in turns to carry him down to the seaside on their backs. because such an excercise would take a number of officers, and do you not think that someone involved in such a momentous event would have talked, the silence is deafening

All of the above are good reasons for treating the documents these officers were involved in as unsafe.

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[Trevor Marriott]

If he was lying in the first place, and you can’t prove that he wasn’t, then his story could have been repeated a thousand times in the thousand different newspapers in it still wouldn’t provide validation.

If he was lying he would have known that part of what he said could be checked out, what motive would he have for being in a country 2000 miles from the UK and mentioning crimes that took place 8 years previous which probably no one would have still had any interest in.

read the chapter in my book and you will see that there is a strong case for naming Feigenbaum as a likely suspect, without the fact that he did cut a womans throat with a long bladed knife and attempted to escape thereafter. Do you have any other suspect who it can be said was guilty of cutting a woman's throat with a long bladed knife ?

I think that is a good starting off point dont you ?

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[Trevor Marriott]

Trevor -- If we are supposed to treat a Chief Constable with "caution," how should we treat

William Sanford Lawton?

Each must be judged on their own merits on what they bring to the evidence table.

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[PaulB]

Informed voice he was not even in the police when the murders occurred all he writes in the Memo is hearsay from 6 years previous there is no corroboration to anything he writes. He wrote it under pressure in 1894 following the sun article on Cutbush. Pressure from above I would suggest.

Far to many opinions in Ripperolgy by senior officers which are not supported by those who actually were directly involved in the investigation, and therefore what Anderson, Swanson and MM and others said in later years is unsafe to rely on. Cant you understand this ?

Ask yourself why is it that the senior officers and the rank and file officers were not singing from the same songsheet?

Anderson and Swanson mention this seaside ID yet MM makes no mention yet he was Swansons immediate superior

Anderson mentions a witness there were no witnesses to any of the murders so how could a witness identify the killer ?

No witness name was ever mentioned

No christian name of the prime suspect Aaron Kosminski was ever written in any of the documents that any of these officers were involved in writing, and no rank and file officer knew of this mythical ID. So who took the suspect to the seaside home did Anderson and swanson take it in turns to carry him down to the seaside on their backs. because such an excercise would take a number of officers, and do you not think that someone involved in such a momentous event would have talked, the silence is deafening

All of the above are good reasons for treating the documents these officers were involved in as unsafe.

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Macnaghten is an informed voice. To begin with, Macnaghten knew the content of the private information that implicated Druitt, we don't. He had access to reports and people, we don't. It was his world, not ours. We also know that he had an abiding interest in crime and criminals and in this case. So, yes, he was informed.

Whether he was in the police in 1888 or not has no bearing on that. He wrote of events in 1888, six years earlier, which doesn't mean he didn't know about them. That he wrote under pressure is your conjecture, not evidence, as is where that pressure came from. The opinion of senior officers is as valid as those of subordinate officers. That the subordinate officers don't support the senior officers is a problem, it isn't proof of anything.

As for Anderson and Swanson, their supposed unreliability or reliability have little bearing of Macnaghten. Each has to be considered on their own merits, so don't drag them into the reliability of Macnaghten's statements about Druitt. But to give you a response, Anderson either imagined the whole identification episode, or he didn't. If he didn't, the problems you highlight are immaterial. If you contend that he did invent it, at the very least present a reasonably comprehensive argument to show that he was prone to inventing from whole cloth scenarios that everyone and their mother knew never took place and about which he would be utterly unable to provide information if his superiors called upon him to do so.

[Trevor Marriott]

Macnaghten is an informed voice. To begin with, Macnaghten knew the content of the private information that implicated Druitt, we don't. He had access to reports and people, we don't. It was his world, not ours. We also know that he had an abiding interest in crime and criminals and in this case. So, yes, he was informed.

Whether he was in the police in 1888 or not has no bearing on that. He wrote of events in 1888, six years earlier, which doesn't mean he didn't know about them. That he wrote under pressure is your conjecture, not evidence, as is where that pressure came from. The opinion of senior officers is as valid as those of subordinate officers. That the subordinate officers don't support the senior officers is a problem, it isn't proof of anything.

As for Anderson and Swanson, their supposed unreliability or reliability have little bearing of Macnaghten. Each has to be considered on their own merits, so don't drag them into the reliability of Macnaghten's statements about Druitt. But to give you a response, Anderson either imagined the whole identification episode, or he didn't. If he didn't, the problems you highlight are immaterial. If you contend that he did invent it, at the very least present a reasonably comprehensive argument to show that he was prone to inventing from whole cloth scenarios that everyone and their mother knew never took place and about which he would be utterly unable to provide information if his superiors called upon him to do so.

The fact is that MM,Anderson and Swanson all wrote in later years details of in ripper terms momentous events taking place so they have to be judged together, they were all senior officers. They write about events that no one outside of their own little worlds has any knowledge of, and there are no independent police records from either the met or the city police to corroborate anything they have said.

So if you want to keep on believing what they said is reliable then thats your prerogative but from my perspective as an investigator I regard them as unsafe to rely on.

One final question for you

Can you explain why in 1894 when MM penned the memo, he makes no mention of the seaside home ID but mentions the name Kosminski and tell us all about his habits etc in great detail. If he was preparing the memo from records should there not have been something in the files about the identification of Jack the Ripper?

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