What makes Druitt a viable suspect?

[PaulB]

There is nothing to show he saw anything in the form of direct evidence. The inference drawn from what he wrote was that it was nothing more than hearsay, and his conclusion he came to as result of that, and the old profiles of the killer from 1888 he was aware of.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Trevor,
The inference you have drawn from what Macnaghten wrote is that it was hearsay. You don’t know what information Macnaghten had, so you don’t know whether it was hearsay or not, and even if it was hearsay, that doesn’t mean it was incorrect, and you are guessing that he based anything on old profiles of the killer. These arguments are worthless unless supported by evidence, and you simply don't have any.

[Trevor Marriott]

Trevor,
The inference you have drawn from what Macnaghten wrote is that it was hearsay. You don’t know what information Macnaghten had, so you don’t know whether it was hearsay or not, and even if it was hearsay, that doesn’t mean it was incorrect, and you are guessing that he based anything on old profiles of the killer. These arguments are worthless unless supported by evidence, and you simply don't have any.

Neither do you have any evidence that his private information was anything but hearsay. so it cuts both ways, and in that case Druitts candidacy as a ripper "suspect" has to be questioned, and not readily accepted. He penned a document, which we now know is full of major errors, so how can the rest of it be relied upon with any certainty without any form of corroboration. There is not one mention by any other police officer who supports MM and the case for Druitt to be the killer.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Herlock Sholmes]

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

.
Neither do you have any evidence that his private information was anything but hearsay

You’ve repeatedly called his private information hearsay as if it’s a fact. This is simply incorrect as it’s impossible to label an unknown. Paul has just explained this to you. It’s very simple.

Druitts candidacy as a ripper "suspect" has to be questioned, and not readily accepted.

This is also incorrect because you’re not taking a balanced view but an entirely biased one.

, which we now know is full of major errors,

This is exaggeration. 41 instead of 31 and doctor instead of Barrister. This would be relevant if we were trying to track Druitt but we aren’t. It’s obvious that Macnaghten was talking about Druitt.

. He penned a document so how can the rest of it be relied upon with any certainty

It’s a logical fallacy to say that because something contains errors it is entirely worthless. Again, bias.

without any form of corroboration

Lawton’s statement couldn’t be corroborated anyone. But hey, why she would expect the same criteria to be applied.

[Wickerman]

Jon.
Mac states there was no proof against anyone.My dictionary defines proof as'Evidence that establishes the truth'.So,there was no evidence,circumstantial or otherwise.Mac's claim,not mine,and Mac was writing as much about Druitt as of anyone else.

Harry.
That is not what your dictionary is telling you.
You say, Proof = Evidence that establishes truth. Which has no bearing on circumstantial evidence, which only suggests possibilities.

[Wickerman]

Jon,
Just curious,but what is your definition of 'Circumstancial evidence',and how does it fit with what MM writes?

Harry.
Circumstantial evidence has more than one interpretation.

No-one is ever going to find 'proof' to accuse anyone of being JtR, though some don't seem get it.
All we are ever going to deal with is circumstantial evidence.

[harry]

Jon,IT IS what my dictionary is telling me ,word for word.Even circumstantial evidence has to have proof.What interpretation are you using?What circumstantial evidence are you using?
In his report of 23 February 1894,MM is writing of past events,At that time over five years had passed since the Autumn of 1888,and Druitt's death.Whatever information had come into MM's possession,and that includes the family's suspicions,there had been time enough for Mac to make an assessment of that information,and those suspicions,and it appears he had done this.His conclusion.No proof in any way could ever be brought againt anyone.
So,although Mac accepted that the information and the family's suspicions were given in good faith, they lacked proof.
Now you may be of the opinion that suspect is appropriate in those circumstances,I,and apparently other posters,do not.

[rjpalmer]

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup.

Hi Simon,

Thank you for the detailed reply. Interesting, as always.

My point is a narrow. If Farquharson is alluding to MJD in 1891, then it can't be said that Macnaghten, writing in 1894, came up with this 'convenient corpse' out-of-the-blue. At the very least, it was a pre-existing theory.

One can write-off Macnaghten as a blow-hard, if one so choses, but it is hard to argue that he was the only member of the brass band. Farquharson appears to be blasting away on the same trumpet.

Meanwhile, Trevor chides Macnaghten because he is a lone wolf. The sole copper that named Druitt. I'm interested in the idea, but I'm not sure if the reasoning is sound. If we were to go strictly by head count, then the Polish Jew would win by three lengths. Even four lengths.

But then, I've always had a soft spot for the odd man out and the dark horse.

Cheers, RP

Patron: Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!

Waiter: I'm sorry, sir, I thought I had removed them all.

[PaulB]

Neither do you have any evidence that his private information was anything but hearsay. so it cuts both ways, and in that case Druitts candidacy as a ripper "suspect" has to be questioned, and not readily accepted. He penned a document, which we now know is full of major errors, so how can the rest of it be relied upon with any certainty without any form of corroboration. There is not one mention by any other police officer who supports MM and the case for Druitt to be the killer.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

This is tiresome.

I don't need any evidence that Macnaghten's information wasn't hearsay because I’m not saying that his information wasn’t hearsay, I’m saying that we don’t know we don't know what Macnaghten's information was, therefore we don't know whether it was hearsay or not. You are the one who is saying the information was hearsay, you are the one who must prove it was, but you can't because you don't know what it is. You seem to have considerable difficulty understanding that no conclusions can be drawn about the information when we know nothing about it. Short of spelling it out to you 'Janet and John' style, I don't know how else to make this clear.

You also seem unable to grasp that nobody is readily accepting Druitt’s candidacy as a Ripper suspect. This is a favourite accusation of yours and insulting, but all this discussion is because Druitt is being questioned, it's just that you keep blocking the progress of that discussion with your nonsense. The bottom line is that you are readily dismissing Druitt. You have no idea what the information was that he/the police received, yet you are drawing conclusions based what you imagine it was.

Once again you fall back on the old can't be 'relied upon with any certainty’ argument, but nobody is relying on it.

All your arguments have been discussed to death.

[PaulB]

Harry.
Circumstantial evidence has more than one interpretation.

No-one is ever going to find 'proof' to accuse anyone of being JtR, though some don't seem get it.
All we are ever going to deal with is circumstantial evidence.

Jon,
If I may interject, there seems to be some confusion here: ‘Proof’ is evidence that establishes the truth. That is, truth is based on evidence, but evidence does not always lead to the truth. Evidence is not proof, as Harry seems to be suggesting, no matter what kind of evidence it is. There could have been a ton of evidence against Druitt, but no proof. All of which I know you know.

[rjpalmer]

Harry -- If concepts like "evidence" and "proof" were as easy to define as you think they are, we wouldn't need juries. These are hard concepts, and one person's evidence or "proof" is another person's malarkey. That's why, in their wisdom, the ancient British decided to leave it up to "twelve men good and true."

A suspect is a person suspected by the police. The suspicions may be strong, or they may be weak; either way, there is no definitive proof, and idea of “proof” is meaningless, anyway, because it is not up to the police to decide. It is up to the jury.

[harry]

I am not suggesting that evidence is proof.What I have written is that the evidence was subjected to assessment by MM,and found to lack proof.
RJ,
I do not define what evidence and proof are.That has been done by other persons.I interpret the meanings of the words as defined by those persons.
It is up to the police ,in murder cases,to collect evidence.They also decide on the strength or weakness of that evidence,so proof is not meaningless at that level.
The evidence against Druitt never went beyond the police,and I do not need to even know what that evidence was,to know that a policeman,MM,decided that there was no proof against anyone,and MM was obviously referring to evidence.

[Phil Carter]

Phil,
One thing you don't do is define what you mean by 'evidence'.

'Evidence' is the information or facts upon which a conclusion is based or upon which the validity of a proposition is tested. Evidence can be good or bad.

As far as Macnaghten is concerned, from what is known about him he does not seem the sort of man who would have who would have concluded that Druitt was the murderer unless he had what he considered to be good reasons. If you have evidence that this was not the case, by all means present it, but the current assessment of Macnaghten is that he did have evidence. We don't know what it was.

Nobody is suggesting that Macnaghten’s account is reliable. We don't know what the evidence was, so we can't say whether it was reliable or not.

I don't know what the information was that Macnaghten seems to suggest had been received by the police at one time or another, and I don't know what was investigated or what was confirmed, or whether anything was investigated or confirmed, so I don't know whether the evidence available to Macnaghten was hearsat or not. And neither do you. Of course, Macnaghten's account may be hearsay to us, but what it is to us is of no interest or relevance. And even if it was hearsay, that doesn't mean it was incorrect. A lot depends on the reliability of the source, and we don't know who the wource(s) was or how reliable he/she was.

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your response. Appreciated.
Yes, the problems here seem to be what is determined to be "evidence".

We do not know the reliability of the source.
We do not know the reliability of the source's information either.
We do not know if any source information was investigated, or by that confirmed.
We have no source to confirm any of the above.

You do not, I note, assess McNaghten's account as reliable. I agree. It cannot be seen as anything else than questionable, given the above.

Given all of the above, we cannot with even the smallest amount of assurity say that the information contained in MM's account, was "evidence", as knowledge of something does not always equate to evidence.

So as far as what evidence is or isn't, I believe that if information recieved cannot be verified, or can be questioned and or dismissed, the words "information recieved" or "knowledge pertaining to" are far more appropriate in this case.

You ask me if I can present anything to question the "sort of man" MM was that might question his presentation of his knowledge to the worse.
Here, we come down to the Anderson problem of personality. Which, without eye witness account from his peers is unlikely to give a definitive answer.
However, I will refer to the many errors in his account, and especially his, words re Cutbush's family as unreliable , the severely wrong fact presented that a high ranking policeman was related, closely, to the criminal Cutbush, as his uncle, and question the obvious.. From WHOM the natural source is to determine that they were related.. (the family of the criminal) yet MM then dismisses their words.
The Ostrog problem is obvious in itself, and the either/or likely scenario of suicude/locked in an insane asylum outcome reveals total uncertainty in his conclusions.
So what "sort of man" can you read from this presentation of accounts?
Well, for my part, BOTH the information presented is unreliable and the man presenting it as facts is unreliable. The two interact with each other.

Therefore, given the facts AS PRESENTED, we simply cannot call this anything other than poorly recounted purported "information received", with massive errors of judgement based on unverifiable sources and source accounts.

Note I will not refer to MM's other work in comparison. (of which my knowledge is limited) or whether he perhaps was regarded as the best fellow to punting his past deeds around a glass of cognac with the chaps after a dinner party in the drawing room whilst enjoying cigars either. What sort of man he is really isn't the point. He may have been kind to animals for all I know.
But I'm only determining his demeanour on the account he presented. Which is not reliable, wrong, questionable and unverified.

Ipso facto. "evidence" it is not. "information received" at best, it is. "Knowledge pertaining to" perhaps.



Phil

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your response. Appreciated.
Yes, the problems here seem to be what is determined to be "evidence".

We do not know the reliability of the source.
True. But I’d say that it’s a more than reasonable probability that an intelligent man in Macnaghten’s position wouldn’t believe something so important merely on gossip, rumour or flimsy provenance.
We do not know the reliability of the source's information either.
True. But ditto the point above and we can also add the Macnaghten did know someone with a definite link to the Druitt family which is a reasonable possibility.
We do not know if any source information was investigated, or by that confirmed.
True. But the source might have been his very close and trusted friend and the evidence might have provided enough to convince Macnaghten but it might not have been enough to convict in a court of law
We have no source to confirm any of the above.

You do not, I note, assess McNaghten's account as reliable. I agree. It cannot be seen as anything else than questionable, given the above.
I see nothing questionable?
Given all of the above, we cannot with even the smallest amount of assurity say that the information contained in MM's account, was "evidence", as knowledge of something does not always equate to evidence.
To make this statement we have to assume dishonesty, error or gullibility. None of which can be shown to have been true.
So as far as what evidence is or isn't, I believe that if information recieved cannot be verified, or can be questioned and or dismissed, the words "information recieved" or "knowledge pertaining to" are far more appropriate in this case.
Were back to terminology again. For me it boils down to Sir Melville Macnaghten, He ACC Of The Met felt that Druitt was a likely suspect. He wouldn’t have felt that if he didn’t feel that he had good reason to.
You ask me if I can present anything to question the "sort of man" MM was that might question his presentation of his knowledge to the worse.
Here, we come down to the Anderson problem of personality. Which, without eye witness account from his peers is unlikely to give a definitive answer.
We do have the testimony of his peers from the upper echelons of the police to Fred Wensley who all spoke in detail about Macnaghten. All spoke highly of him and his integrity.
However, I will refer to the many errors in his account, and especially his, words re Cutbush's family as unreliable , the severely wrong fact presented that a high ranking policeman was related, closely, to the criminal Cutbush, as his uncle, and question the obvious.. From WHOM the natural source is to determine that they were related.. (the family of the criminal) yet MM then dismisses their words.
The Ostrog problem is obvious in itself, and the either/or likely scenario of suicude/locked in an insane asylum outcome reveals total uncertainty in his conclusions.
Or it reveals that he was primarily advancing Druitt. If he’d heard that the two Cutbush’s were related he might have just assumed it to have been true. He might simply have felt that it was common knowledge.
So what "sort of man" can you read from this presentation of accounts?
By all accounts he was an intelligent, conscientious, decent man. Not the gullible liar that he appears to be being portrayed.
Well, for my part, BOTH the information presented is unreliable and the man presenting it as facts is unreliable. The two interact with each other.
I disagree. Minor errors are being inflated in there importance here.
Therefore, given the facts AS PRESENTED, we simply cannot call this anything other than poorly recounted purported "information received", with massive errors of judgement based on unverifiable sources and source accounts.
An exaggeration. This is the opinion of a man for whom no one had anything but praise. The mere fact that he mentions Druitt, on the face of it an unlikely ripper, should give us pause to think why? We have no reason to call Mac a liar or a fool. It’s just a convenient position if someone wishes to eliminate/exonerate Druitt.
Note I will not refer to MM's other work in comparison. (of which my knowledge is limited) or whether he perhaps was regarded as the best fellow to punting his past deeds around a glass of cognac with the chaps after a dinner party in the drawing room whilst enjoying cigars either. What sort of man he is really isn't the point. He may have been kind to animals for all I know.
Come On Phil. I suppose Mac might have been a serial killer too. You pick up on inconsequential errors to show what an idiot Mac was but dismiss anyone that’s been complementary toward him as irrelevant. I don’t know if you’ve read Jon Hainsworth’s book on Druitt? He believes that Mac, with the help of Sims, sought to disguise Druitt’s identity to protect the family. It’s an interesting point that Mac’s errors are always pointed out as signs of a poor memory and yet those who recalled Mac in writing all talk about his remarkable memory for facts and details.
But I'm only determining his demeanour on the account he presented. Which is not reliable, wrong, questionable and unverified.
Massive exaggeration.
Ipso facto. "evidence" it is not. "information received" at best, it is. "Knowledge pertaining to" perhaps.
Macnaghten said that Druitt was a likely suspect and that he’d received private information that persuaded him. We don’t know what that information was. Those are the facts.



Phil

I can certainly understand caution Phil but there appears to be a lot of strenuous effort around trying to paint Macnaghten as either dishonest or a blithering idiot. There’s no evidence for either. Small errors occur but how could he have been in error over suspecting Druitt? Did he get Druitt confused with someone else? Did someone say that Druitt occasionally went out late at night so he assumed that he was the ripper? The idea that Mac could have misinterpreted something or have been mistaken are unlikely in the extreme. As is a suggestion that the family might have invented the story. So I don’t think that anyone thinks that Mac might have been in error. It appears that it’s purely down to honesty and it’s very convenient to simply assume that he was liar even though there’s no evidence for this.

[PaulB]

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your response. Appreciated.
Yes, the problems here seem to be what is determined to be "evidence".

We do not know the reliability of the source.
We do not know the reliability of the source's information either.
We do not know if any source information was investigated, or by that confirmed.
We have no source to confirm any of the above.

You do not, I note, assess McNaghten's account as reliable. I agree. It cannot be seen as anything else than questionable, given the above.

Given all of the above, we cannot with even the smallest amount of assurity say that the information contained in MM's account, was "evidence", as knowledge of something does not always equate to evidence.

So as far as what evidence is or isn't, I believe that if information recieved cannot be verified, or can be questioned and or dismissed, the words "information recieved" or "knowledge pertaining to" are far more appropriate in this case.

You ask me if I can present anything to question the "sort of man" MM was that might question his presentation of his knowledge to the worse.
Here, we come down to the Anderson problem of personality. Which, without eye witness account from his peers is unlikely to give a definitive answer.
However, I will refer to the many errors in his account, and especially his, words re Cutbush's family as unreliable , the severely wrong fact presented that a high ranking policeman was related, closely, to the criminal Cutbush, as his uncle, and question the obvious.. From WHOM the natural source is to determine that they were related.. (the family of the criminal) yet MM then dismisses their words.
The Ostrog problem is obvious in itself, and the either/or likely scenario of suicude/locked in an insane asylum outcome reveals total uncertainty in his conclusions.
So what "sort of man" can you read from this presentation of accounts?
Well, for my part, BOTH the information presented is unreliable and the man presenting it as facts is unreliable. The two interact with each other.

Therefore, given the facts AS PRESENTED, we simply cannot call this anything other than poorly recounted purported "information received", with massive errors of judgement based on unverifiable sources and source accounts.

Note I will not refer to MM's other work in comparison. (of which my knowledge is limited) or whether he perhaps was regarded as the best fellow to punting his past deeds around a glass of cognac with the chaps after a dinner party in the drawing room whilst enjoying cigars either. What sort of man he is really isn't the point. He may have been kind to animals for all I know.
But I'm only determining his demeanour on the account he presented. Which is not reliable, wrong, questionable and unverified.

Ipso facto. "evidence" it is not. "information received" at best, it is. "Knowledge pertaining to" perhaps.



Phil

Phil,
Claiming that information implicating Druitt was received by the police at ‘one time or another’ and to state to one’s superiors that after due consideration one was inclined to believe that Druitt was the murderer, is a not something that can be lightly dismissed. Either it happened or it didn’t, either Macnaghten was telling the truth or he was lying. I don’t think a few scattered errors is sufficient reason to to conclude that it didn’t happen or that Macnaghten lied.

I’m afraid the errors just don't cut it when determining whether information implicating Druitt is concerned. You need to examine as much of Macnaghten’s writings and career as is possible. We need to know if there are other examples of Macnaghten claiming the police received information when they didn’t, of inventing scenarios that never happened, or of habitually exaggerating… And I'm afraid 'information received' is evidence, evidence being the facts upon which a conclusion is based, and Macnaghten's conclusion being based on the information received.

[PaulB]

'I am not suggesting that evidence is proof.What I have written is that the evidence was subjected to assessment by MM,and found to lack proof.'

We know there was no proof, but that doesn't mean the evidence was bad or the conclusion based on it was wrong.