What makes Druitt a viable suspect?

[Herlock Sholmes]

In Internet slang, a troll is a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive,^[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses^[2] and normalizing tangential discussion,^[3] whether for the troll's amusement or a specific gain.

I shouldn’t be encouraging this type of poster. Time to move on and to ignore. My point has been proven beyond all doubt.

[JeffHamm]

I shouldn’t be encouraging this type of poster. Time to move on and to ignore. My point has been proven beyond all doubt.

on trolls

if you search out there in the wild wild lands
where the rivers run cold and the trees still stand
in thick dark woods always deep in the night
it lives and it dreams and it loves to bite

so go with care walking here to there
in case a troll grabs a strand of hair
for it likes to play with string and thread
and it lives on games not butter nor bread

it's a nasty old troll so droll and bold
whose words are dust and grim and cold
it's worse than a snake or a hornet's sting
and it grabs and it bites and it kicks at things

so leave it alone let it chew on bones
it will scream and call and shout and groan
for awhile and then it will fade away
for trolls can't bite if no one plays

[Herlock Sholmes]

on trolls

if you search out there in the wild wild lands
where the rivers run cold and the trees still stand
in thick dark woods always deep in the night
it lives and it dreams and it loves to bite

so go with care walking here to there
in case a troll grabs a strand of hair
for it likes to play with string and thread
and it lives on games not butter nor bread

it's a nasty old troll so droll and bold
whose words are dust and grim and cold
it's worse than a snake or a hornet's sting
and it grabs and it bites and it kicks at things

so leave it alone let it chew on bones
it will scream and call and shout and groan
for awhile and then it will fade away
for trolls can't bite if no one plays

Message received Jeff (hopefully)

I seem to be a magnet.

Cheers

[harry]

Herlock,
You would have a piece of evidence in the signing of the book.The signature could be matched against that of Rumbelow.
Where in the MM telling do we have such evidence.
Why bring up the question of who is the better person to listen to.Is that some kind of guide that solves arguments.

[mpriestnall]

We've been through that several times on this thread, but one is looking at his career for examples of him doing that, whether or not he was respected by his colleagues or had a reputation for jumping too quickly to rash conclusions; his intelligence, education, experience in and out of the job... all the usual ways we have of judging the probability of someone being informed enough to know what they're talking about. History is chock full of uncorroborated statements by people in diaries, assorted private papers, and so forth.

Paul, thanks for the reply especially since this has already been discussed. I didn't really express myself well/fully with my post.

At the back of my mind, I wanted to question our view of Sir MM's honesty. If there is no definite evidence to suggest honesty/dishonesty
then I think we should have a neutral position regarding this question, rather than having a blind faith assumption he was telling the truth about his
assertiion that MJD was JTR.

Martyn

[PaulB]

Herlock,
You would have a piece of evidence in the signing of the book.The signature could be matched against that of Rumbelow.
Where in the MM telling do we have such evidence.
Why bring up the question of who is the better person to listen to.Is that some kind of guide that solves arguments.

Do you disbelieve everything people tell you unless they can prove it? With or without the signed book to prove the truth of what he said, why would you choose to disbelieve Herlock?

As for who is the better person to listen to, don't you choose to listen to the person you think is the most knowledgeable and better informed, who has more experience of dealing with the problem? Obviously, it down to you to decide who is likely to be the best person to listen to, but once you have done that, isn't it a guide to where the solution probably rests?

[mpriestnall]

I remember reading in a ripper book that the police had developed a list of 10 suspects and had reduced it to three.

Does anybody know of the book I mean and the source of this?

Or have any more info about this?

It's interesting that the police also had a list of 3 likelies as well as MM...

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock,
You would have a piece of evidence in the signing of the book.The signature could be matched against that of Rumbelow.
Where in the MM telling do we have such evidence.
Why bring up the question of who is the better person to listen to.Is that some kind of guide that solves arguments.

No Harry

The point that I was trying to make, however inefficiently, is that it’s not reasonable to dismiss Macnaghten or his Memorandum, simply because of a couple of errors. We know that the contents of the MM are not proof in themselves except of the fact that Macnaghten believed that he had good evidence at the time (unless of course you believe that Macnaghten simply made all this up.) As I’ve said before, we know that he was talking about Montague John Druitt despite any errors or variations of his story. To be honest Harry it baffles me how anyone can read books like the ones by Anderson and Hainsworth and not, at the very least, think that Druitt is an interesting suspect. Repeatedly mentioning that there’s no evidence is almost a call to close down the suspects section of the Forum. There’s no actual evidence against any of them (unless you go for Lechmere being at the scene?) So why do posters get so riled when we suggest that Druitt is worth looking at?

We have the fact that he was considered a likely suspect by Mac (which is enough on its own), we have the strange circumstances around his suicide and his sacking. We have Farquharson, we have the priest’s story, we have HL Fleet, we have Robert Druitt’s halted memoirs, we now have a connection between Mac and the Druitt’s. None of this is proof of course but why should we dismiss it all when there are suspects that have nothing approaching as many points of interest.

I can only think that dismissing him out of hand shows a preconception; a bias.
I have no issue with anyone weighing things up and coming to the opinion that they don’t feel that Druitt is a good suspect.
I simply think that we should remain open minded (and that doesn’t mean uncritical.)
I have no problem saying that I feel that Druitt is our best suspect (and that is my opinion) no matter how much it riles people.
I also have no issue with expressing surprise that some posters can dismiss a book without actually reading it first!

[Sam Flynn]

If there is no definite evidence to suggest honesty/dishonesty then I think we should have a neutral position regarding this question, rather than having a blind faith assumption he was telling the truth about his assertion that MJD was JTR.

I think there's little doubt that his favoured suspect was MJD, and there are two factors that indicate that he was sincere in his assertions. The first is that he includes Druitt in the Memorandum in the first place, justifying his inclusion with reference to his suicide, his being "sexually insane", and the family connection. The second is that MM was evidently still a firm advocate of the suicide explanation for the cessation of the Ripper murders nearly two decades later, when he published his autobiography. The relevant parts are underlined below:

"the probability is that, after his awful glut [at Miller's Court] he committed suicide, otherwise the murders would not have ceased. The man, of course, was a sexual maniac... [I do not believe] that he had ever been detained in an asylum, nor lived in lodgings [Ed: so that rules out Kosminski and most working-class suspects]. I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888" (Days of My Years, 1914)

So, was he being honest in his advocacy of Druitt? The evidence suggests that he was. Whether he was right is another matter.

(As an aside, it's interesting that Macnaghten asserts that the Ripper "absented himself from home at certain times", italicised above. Was this detail part of the private information to which Macnaghten refers in the Memorandum? It seems a bold thing to have made up and its inclusion is somewhat superfluous, as the sentence works perfectly well without it.)

[PaulB]

Paul, thanks for the reply especially since this has already been discussed. I didn't really express myself well/fully with my post.

At the back of my mind, I wanted to question our view of Sir MM's honesty. If there is no definite evidence to suggest honesty/dishonesty
then I think we should have a neutral position regarding this question, rather than having a blind faith assumption he was telling the truth about his
assertiion that MJD was JTR.

Martyn

We should indeed adopt a neutral position in such circumstances, but certainty one way or the other is often impossible and we'd have piles of sources sitting on a shelf and gathering dust if we didn't make an effort to establish their reliability with the information available to us. So, we find out as much about the source as we can, and not just the author but also the document itself, and we make a value judgement based on that. If there's no reason to believe that Macnaghten would have lied about information being received that implicated Druitt, why would we suppose that he lied about it? If there is no evidence that Macnaghten would have championed Druitt just because some chap told him Druitt was the Ripper, why suppose that's what he did? This is over-simplistic, of course, but source analysis is what historians do all the time.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Paul, thanks for the reply especially since this has already been discussed. I didn't really express myself well/fully with my post.

At the back of my mind, I wanted to question our view of Sir MM's honesty. If there is no definite evidence to suggest honesty/dishonesty
then I think we should have a neutral position regarding this question, rather than having a blind faith assumption he was telling the truth about his
assertiion that MJD was JTR.

Martyn

I don’t think it’s about blind faith Martin. Let’s face it, we usually tend to believe rather than disbelieve unless we have evidence to the contrary. Life would be a bit difficult if we wanted proof for everything.

On your point about evidence of Mac’s honesty/dishonesty. Do we have an any examples of Mac lying? I can think, of one. In his memoirs he said that he was offered the job by Munro but he had to turn it down due to commitments. We know that this is untrue and that Warren contacted Matthews to veto his appointment. This was simply a manoeuvre by Mac to save face or, if we are being kinder we might suggest that he didn’t want to show that Munro (a man that he greatly respected) had been overruled. On the other side we know that Macnaghten was held in high regard by all that knew and worked with him. Perhaps we might also suggest that someone in his position would be far more likely to come under scrutiny and so wouldn’t be inclined to put himself in a position to be shown to have lied. We know how the Victorians valued honour and hated shame and scandal.

I know that not everyone agrees with me (of course) but my point is - why would he pick Druitt as a suspect if he didn’t feel that he had good reason to. He could undoubtedly have chosen an anonymous unknown that would have fit the criteria better than Druitt (evidence of violence or criminality for a start) Druitt is a troublesome choice (no violence, easier to research, previous good character etc) and a potentially embarrassing one (related by marriage to a close friend of Mac’s.)

So we have four choices:

1. We assume that Mac was lying and so dismiss Druitt.
2. We assume that he was in some way mistaken and so dismiss Druitt.
3. We can, after looking into it, come to the conclusion that Mac was honest but that Druitt wasn’t a good suspect.
4. We can suggest that it’s possible that Mac was being honest - in which case we can remain of the belief that Druitt is a worthwhile suspect

I choose four. No real issue with three. One and two can be dismissed.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So, was he being honest in his advocacy of Druitt? The evidence suggests that he was. Whether he was right is another matter.

(As an aside, it's interesting that Macnaghten asserts that the Ripper "absented himself from home at certain times", italicised above. Was this detail part of the private information to which Macnaghten refers in the Memorandum? It seems a bold thing to have made up and its inclusion is somewhat superfluous, as the sentence works perfectly well without it.)

Good points Sam.

Could it have been the reason why Druitt was sacked? Could he have been seen going out late at night and returning in the early hours on the night of the murders? Could someone have confronted him after Kelly and found blood, a knife etc?

To be fair, could he have gone out regularly, but just happen to get spotted on some of the murder nights? Maybe the rumour got out and people put two and two together? (Fleet)

[Sam Flynn]

Could someone have confronted him after Kelly and found blood, a knife etc?

Probably not. Something as dramatic as the find of a bloody knife would surely have found its way into the "private information" if it had happened. Chances are that the night absences alone were enough to attract attention/suspicion... assuming Macnaghten's "private informant" wasn't simply embellishing.

[Joshua Rogan]

I think there's little doubt that his favoured suspect was MJD, and there are two factors that indicate that he was sincere in his assertions. The first is that he includes Druitt in the Memorandum in the first place, justifying his inclusion with reference to his suicide, his being "sexually insane", and the family connection. The second is that MM was evidently still a firm advocate of the suicide explanation for the cessation of the Ripper murders nearly two decades later, when he published his autobiography. The relevant parts are underlined below:

"the probability is that, after his awful glut [at Miller's Court] he committed suicide, otherwise the murders would not have ceased. The man, of course, was a sexual maniac... [I do not believe] that he had ever been detained in an asylum, nor lived in lodgings [Ed: so that rules out Kosminski and most working-class suspects]. I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888" (Days of My Years, 1914)

So, was he being honest in his advocacy of Druitt? The evidence suggests that he was. Whether he was right is another matter.

(As an aside, it's interesting that Macnaghten asserts that the Ripper "absented himself from home at certain times", italicised above. Was this detail part of the private information to which Macnaghten refers in the Memorandum? It seems a bold thing to have made up and its inclusion is somewhat superfluous, as the sentence works perfectly well without it.)

Isn't the important part Mac's belief that he "resided with his own people"? Doesn't that rule out Druitt, or did his people live at the school in Blackheath?

[Sam Flynn]

Isn't the important part Mac's belief that he "resided with his own people"? Doesn't that rule out Druitt, or did his people live at the school in Blackheath?

I suspect that the fault lies with Macnaghten's private informant. There's another possible clue to the same effect in the Memorandum itself, where Macnaghten writes that Druitt was only "said to be" a doctor. If his source(s) had been more accurate, errors such as these would have been unlikely.