What makes Druitt a viable suspect?

[Jonathan H]

To Jason C

I disagree with everything you have wiritten.

Far from gossiping, Macnaghten was notoriously close-mouthed, and when it came to Druitt he informed nobody among his colleagues, as their various comments and memoirs show.

Sims was Mac's pal of long-standing and, I argue, from March 1st 1891 his mouth-piece on the Ripper solution that the chief cosntable had just discovered.

In 1903 and 1907, the famous writer had dismissed the Polish suspect favored by Anderson.

Chris Phillips discovered another "Mustard and Cress" column, from 1910, in which Sims as Dagonet is insulting and scathing towards Anderson; calling his opinions "Fairy Tales" --and accusing him, unfairly, of cartoonish anti-Semitism.

Far from being handed tidbits by Macnaghten, Sims knew the whole story right from the start. He was privy to information that Scotland Yard was not.

The very fact that Jack Littlechild wites to Sims that he has never hard of a Dr D means he knows nothing about Montague Druitt, who was not a doctor. That he follows up with writing that it was believed at the Yard that Dr. T had killed himself shows he has been misled by somebody in authority.

Tom Divall wrote in 1930 that Macnaghten had told him that the Ripper had fled to the States and died in a madhouse.

[GUT]

G'day Jonathan

The very fact that Jack Littlechild wites to Sims that he has never hard of a Dr D means he knows nothing about Montague Druitt, who was not a doctor. That he follows up with writing that it was believed at the Yard that Dr. T had killed himself shows he has been misled by somebody in authority.

That bit I cannot agree with I might say that I know nothing about a Dr Jonathan [if you aren't one] while at the same time knowing about a Jonathan who posts on Facebook and lives in lovely city and has an interesting book coming out.

f Sims letter said "Do you know Dr D" rather than "Do you know Dr Druitt" it makes Littlechild's response logical, because he is thinking Dr. it, unfortunately, doesn't prove he knew nothing about Druitt.

[Jonathan H]

Yes it does.

Littlechild is fishing for the whole identity of Sims' mad doctor who killed himself.

Littlechild cannot recall a 'Dr D' from the original investigation--because there was not one--and so falls back, understandably, on the dodgy doctor who was a major Ripper suspect in 1888.

Furthermore he makes the connection because Sims' doctor killed himself and so it was also "believed", by somebody in-the-know, that the American had, perhaps, come to the same end.

If the ex-chief had known the slightest thing about Druitt, and I do not believe he did or could, then he would have written:

'Or did you mean Mr. D, who drowned himself in the Thames?'

Then there is Littlechild's advice that if Sims is relying on Major Griffiths (suggesting that Sims somewhat fobbed off Littlechild by deflecting him towards "Mysteries of Police and Crime"), well, he got his information from Anderson who was pretty conceited and an over-reacher.

Littlechild is wrong again (though right about Anderson).

Griffiths had written an adaptation of the unofficial version of the Macnaghten Report (with the innovation that the "family" had become "friends". If the family is being hidden why not its maniacal member?), ergo his source was Macnaghten not Anderson, the former dismissing the latter's Polish madman solution.

Macnaghten's name appears nowehre in the Littlechild Letter, though his 'fingerprints' are everywhere.

[barnflatwyngarde]

Thanks to Pink and Wyatt

I would just add for now that unlike the DNA over-reach and the probable stretch that Cornwell is about to make (love the cover!) there is no issues of provenance.

That is not to say that everybody will agree with my interpretation--not at all. I expect hardly anybody here will.

If the 2008 vital discovery of Henry Farquharson from 1891--the missing link between Drutit as a tragic barrister and turning up as a police chief's prim suspect as serial killer--could make so little impact, then I hold out little hope for what my book will reveal.

In the sense of moving people away from the narrow obession with the memo and instead to refocus on the more accurate memoir. Lady Christabel Aberconway tried to do this two years ebfore her feath, in vain.

I argue that we do know the broad thrust of the "private information", if you put together the MP's confession-in-deed, the Vicar's confession-in-word and Sims' confession to doctor prior to the murders. Culpability could only come from one quarter, otherwise it would never have entered his family's heads (e.g. the doctor's "friends") to suspect him--that is from Montague's own lips.

"Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper" drops the incriminating confession-in-deed whilst still trying to retain it too--very awkwardly. Killing himself the next day, or night (or was it longer?) deflates the melodrama of the "shrieking, raving fiend" staggering to the river to the point of being about as impressive as a limp noodle (Guy Logan has exactly the same dramatic problem in his 1905 novella and it makes just as little sense, though at least he included the Thames death to make up for it).

Sir Melville did not want to repeat the confession aspect, in any form, and so he lifted the plot device of "The Lodger" (the people the reclusive maniac lives with twig he is the killer because he only goes out on the nights of the crimes--repeated by Sims in 1915), while pointedly denying that the novel was accurate at all. It was the last time that Druitt was shielded by fiction.

Macnaghten was so cautious about any readers not connecting it to Druitt that he denies them the colourful and climactic detail of the suicide in the river. Instead he has to make do with the 1888 press hyperbole that Warren resigned over Whitechapel. The ex-chief knew this was as untrue as the notion that the killer lived with family ("his own people)".

Macnaghten is clearly substituting popular fiction for what he knew to be the genuine "certain facts" that led to a "conclusion" about the barrister's guilt

My argument is that it was Montague's confession that it replaced.

My argument is that it was Montague's confession that it replaced.

In the immortal words of Isaac Hayes, "Damn right".

Looking forward to your book.

Did your research discover whether Druitt had a blotchy face?

[Wyatt Earp]

Something else about Druitt is the fact that he was a single man and that he had potentially two places to safely take his plunderd organs to this basic fact is always forgotten about when people propose suspects to us could a married man turn up in the small hours bloodstained and carrying human organs ?

Pinkmoon, I've seen you make this argument in favor of a Ripper who was single a couple of times now. I have a few questions for you.

1) Can you rule out the possibility that a married Ripper did not go straight home with the organs but instead went to a friend's place or some other bolthole? I can tell of you of at least one married man who has been named as the Ripper who could be gone from home for a couple of days at a time...

2) Can you rule out the possibility that a married Ripper's wife was battered and acquiescent?

3) Can you rule out the possibility that a married Ripper's wife was a sketchy person herself and, for whatever reason, willing to let him get away with it?

[Harry D]

Poor Montague. He seems like he was a pensive fellow touched with melancholy. Having lost his job and his social standing, and a history of mental illness in the family, it's no wonder he descended into a severe bout of depression and decided to punch out early rather than end up like his old mum. So if it weren't for that, maybe we'd have legitimate reason to suspect Druitt. As GUT rightfully pointed out, Druitt was still performing his legal duties after the "glut" in Miller's Court. So this claim that his mind snapped after murdering MJK is a spurious one.

Now let's say that Druitt did confess in private to the killings. It's possible, I mean Macnaghten must've had some basis for suspecting Druitt other than the time of his death. Confessions are almost worthless unless there's some corroborating evidence to support them. Druitt certainly wouldn't be alone in falsely confessing to being the Ripper. Perhaps part of the reason Druitt feared for his sanity was because he had confessed to crimes he didn't even commit? Take the confession, marry it with his time of death, and Macnaghten has all the reason he needs. If only it was that simple.

[GUT]

How dd Montie loose hs social standing IF he lost his job as as a teacher?

[pinkmoon]

Pinkmoon, I've seen you make this argument in favor of a Ripper who was single a couple of times now. I have a few questions for you.

1) Can you rule out the possibility that a married Ripper did not go straight home with the organs but instead went to a friend's place or some other bolthole? I can tell of you of at least one married man who has been named as the Ripper who could be gone from home for a couple of days at a time...

2) Can you rule out the possibility that a married Ripper's wife was battered and acquiescent?

3) Can you rule out the possibility that a married Ripper's wife was a sketchy person herself and, for whatever reason, willing to let him get away with it?

Good evening wyatt,I can't rule out any of what you say might well be right but I think that there is a good chance the ripper lived alone or at least had somewhere he could go to be alone.We know Druitt had a room at the school in blackheath which is quite a distance from the murder sites and also chambers in kings bench walk which isn't that far from the murder sites.

[pinkmoon]

Anyone one on here think that when sir Melville was given Druitts name that he might well have done some basic checks maybe checked any documents related to his work or sports commitments to see if he could have been free to be our killer

[GUT]

Anyone one on here think that when sir Melville was given Druitts name that he might well have done some basic checks maybe checked any documents related to his work or sports commitments to see if he could have been free to be our killer

Nope the cops were too dumb to make any inquiries into anyone, well that's what some people seem to think.

[pinkmoon]

Nope the cops were too dumb to make any inquiries into anyone, well that's what some people seem to think.

I find it impossible to believe that in case of this magnitude that if a name was given to a senior police officer as a possible solution then some basic enquires would not be made perhaps that happend in this case nothing was discovered to dismiss Druitt as our killer but nothing was found to link him to the murders.

[Jonathan H]

An Exhaustive Inquiry?

Druitt's suicide has nothing to do with being dimsissed from the school.

Even the one source that provides incomplete and ambiguous data about the dismissal for "serious trouble" does not link it to his self-murder.

There is no mention of scandal. His death was inexplicable?! He had left a note, apparently, in which he feared going into the madhouse, e.g. like his mother and so preferred the river option (that this is the meaning of his note is now confirmed by Guy Logan in 1905).

As for the notion of Druitt being a raving lunatic in the immediate aftermath of the Kelly murder, and thisince he wasn't this is therefore evidence of Macnaghten's ignorance, his memoir cleaves close to the true historical timeline than do Farquharason and Sims (again confirmed by Guy Logan)

By the way, that the breakthrough Logan source, in which so much of the case disguised theory is cofirmed, can, nonetheless, be virtually entirely ignored on two Jack the Ripper sites does not, eh, augur well for anything my book claims to have found ...

Sims as Dagonet in "The Referee" of July 13th 1902, in his regular and widely read "Mustard and Cress" column, arguably provides a veiled version of Macnaghten's private, singular and posthumous investigation into Druitt:

'If the authorities thought it worth while to spend money and time, they might eventually get at the identity of the woman [another murder case] by the same process of exhaustion which enabled them at last to know the real name and address of Jack the Ripper.

In that case they had reduced the only possible Jacks to seven, then by a further exhaustive inquiry to three, and were about to fit these three people's movements in with the dates of the various murders when the one and only genuine Jack saved further trouble by being found drowned in the Thames, into which he had flung himself, a raving lunatic, after the last and most appalling mutilation of the whole series.

But prior to this discovery the name of the man found drowned was bracketed with two others as

A Possible Jack

and the police were in search of him alive when they found him dead. ...'

[Parker_Pyne79]

Guilt

I suppose that it is mostly the fact that he killed himself after the Mary Kelly murder. Guilt? As soon as he killed himself the killings stopped. However, Montague may not be seen as a suspect and the suicide may just be a coincidence as many people believe that Mary Kelly was not the last victim. So it is up to you and what you believe to have happened after the murder of Kelly.

[GUT]

I suppose that it is mostly the fact that he killed himself after the Mary Kelly murder. Guilt? As soon as he killed himself the killings stopped. However, Montague may not be seen as a suspect and the suicide may just be a coincidence as many people believe that Mary Kelly was not the last victim. So it is up to you and what you believe to have happened after the murder of Kelly.

Well they only stopped if MJK was the last.

[wigngown]

Yes, good point GUT.