The exact meaning of "sexually insane"

[eighty-eighter]

This term used to describe him after his death from back then puzzles me a bit, what exactly does it mean? Did his willy think it was on a mission to rid the east-end of whores or something!!

[Jonathan H]

In Chapter X of 'DAYS OF MY YEARS' (1914), Sir Melville Macnaghten's memoirs, ‘MOTIVELESS MURDERS’, he defines this malady on p. 61:

“As I have said before, when writing of the Whitechapel murders, such madness takes Protean forms. Very few people, except barristers, doctors, and police officers, realize that such a thing as sexual mania exists, and, in a murder case similar to the two mentioned above, it is a most difficult task for prosecuting counsel to make a jury fully understand that it supplies and accounts for the complete absence of any other motive for the crime.

Students of history, however, are aware that an excessive indulgence in vice leads, in certain cases, to a craving for blood. Nero was probably a sexual maniac. Many Eastern potentates in all ages, who loved to see slaves slaughtered or wild beasts tearing each other to pieces, have been similarly affected. The disease is not as rare as many people imagine. As you walk in the London streets you may, and do, not infrequently jostle against a potential murderer of the so-called Jack the Ripper type. The subject is not a pleasant one, but to those who study the depths of human nature it is intensely interesting.’

Sexual mania therefore means to gain erotic pleasure from either witnessing or causing acts of ultra-violence and/or death.

Sir Melville committed to file in 1894 the following:

‘M. J. Druitt ... was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.'

How did the family know their member was definitely sexually insane and thus believed he was Jack the Ripper? I think it is a word game by the police chief. As in, they believed Montague was sexually insane because he was the Ripper, and the latter gained perverse pleasure from savaging harlots.

[lynn cates]

unhealthy

Hello 88. I would suggest that "sexually insane" be thought of according to its Latin roots--"insanus" = "unhealthy."

Cheers.
LC

[sepiae]

... or perhaps code...?

Hi eighty-eighter,

I'd also propose that 'sexually insane' might have been code in those years, and possibly for two different things.

One would be homosexuality. Tumblety was attributed with a similar term in the Littlechild-letter, and it may well be that his being gay was what was meant, given his arrest on charge of 'indecencies.'

Whether this applied to Druitt...? He was fired from his job, I don't think anyone knows for sure why.

The 2nd code-possibility would be syphilis. If you go to the podcast page, the latest pod contains Robert Anderson's talk he gave at the Salisbury conference.

http://www.casebook.org/podcast/listen.html?id=106

You can also download the slide-presentation there, and you'll find a number of code-expressions for syphilis in there.

[Jonathan H]

To 88er

Both Lynn and Sepiae are correct and yet misleadingly, hopelessly wrong.

Sure, sexual insanity has a Latin root and it could mean homosexual.

But it is Macnaghten who called Druitt sexually insane, and in his memoirs he explains exactly what this means: erotic pleasure from ultra-violence.

Macnaghten believed that Druitt was the Ripper, therefore he believed he was sexually insane.

There is no evidence that Druitt was gay, or that anybody thought he was, or that he was sacked from the school for a scandalous reason, or was even alive when he was dismissed.

That Montie Druitt was sacked for being a tormented homosexual is, nonetheless, one of the foundation rocks of modern 'Ripperology' which is built around the notion that the case is a mystery to this day.

Now stand back and watch the resistance-at-all-costs ...

[sepiae]

resistance is hopeless...

To 88er

Both Lynn and Sepiae are correct and yet misleadingly, hopelessly wrong.

Sure, sexual insanity has a Latin root and it could mean homosexual.

But it is Macnaghten who called Druitt sexually insane, and in his memoirs he explains exactly what this means: erotic pleasure from ultra-violence.

Macnaghten believed that Druitt was the Ripper, therefore he believed he was sexually insane.

There is no evidence that Druitt was gay, or that anybody thought he was, or that he was sacked from the school for a scandalous reason, or was even alive when he was dismissed.

That Montie Druitt was sacked for being a tormented homosexual is, nonetheless, one of the foundation rocks of modern 'Ripperology' which is built around the notion that the case is a mystery to this day.

Now stand back and watch the resistance-at-all-costs ...

Hi Jonathan of H Division, and once more 88er,

throwing towels in the ring is very unpopular here, but in the end it's not a real throw - totally agree with there being no evidence for Druitt having been gay [and none at all for him having had syphilis, for that matter...].

The towel might come in as the 88-question directly referred to Macnaghten, and my reply entailed more the general use of code.
Which still might come in handy for anyone reading this before knowing

Your answer is, of course, the one that counts. Doesn't really cast much of a favourable light on Macnaghten's suspect/evidence-reasoning.
But then again, neither does the thinking the codes in question suggest.

No fighting on this side, sorry

[pinkmoon]

more than simple gossip

I think because there was never a Mrs Druitt that a lot of people have assumed that Monty was gay it's quite possible that Monty was simply to busy to have a wife or girlfriend what with his two jobs and hobbies .We can't rule out that Monty used prostitutes and some stage of his life possible in the area of the murders or close by nor can we say for sure if he had contracted syphilis which I have always thought could be a cracking motive for the murders .We will always come back to the fact that some person or persons must have told sir Melville something about Monty which lead to him drawing the conclusion that Monty was our killer what this is we will never know for sure but it must have been something a lot stronger than simple gossip could his informant mentioned the sexual angle to these crime s hence spawning the sexually insane claim.

[GUT]

Maybe it means he went insane trying to get sex.

Which could indicate that he had been married for a fair while and we just never knew.

:rofl"

[GUT]

Maybe it means he went insane trying to get sex.

Which could indicate that he had been married for a fair while and we just never knew.

[pinkmoon]

But Druitt couldn't have possibly been married he was far to intelligent for that .

[Spider]

I think the 'sexually insane' was an expression which simply covered Homosexuality in Druitts case.
Similar in the way that sex offenders in prison were logged back in the day in the offence section as 'NONCE' - Not Of Normal Criminal Expectations. It was simply not an expected crime in line with the majority they dealt with.
Both cover a multitude of sins without stating it outright.

[Roy Corduroy]

We can't rule out that Monty used prostitutes and some stage of his life possible in the area of the murders or close by nor can we say for sure if he had contracted syphilis which I have always thought could be a cracking motive for the murders.

No we can't rule that out, Pink, I agree.

As Macnaghten said: "Students of history, however, are aware that an excessive indulgence in vice leads, in certain cases, to a craving for blood."

Repeated assignation with prostitutes, enough so you contract syphilis certainly constitutes "excessive indulgence in vice." If Montague Druitt consorted with prostitutes, though, they would have been the West End variety for a man of his station. But contracting syphilis, he took out his revenge, not on those West End ladies, but on the most vulnerable of the prostitute class, the Unfortunates of Whitechapel.

Which makes the crime spree very confounding if Druitt were the serial killer. What on earth is he doing in the East End, in the first place. Because in the sense of 'sexual insanity' there was nothing at all sexy about the Unfortunates. I truly hate to denigrate the poor victims, but they were not really 'harlots' as JJ is wont to call them, they were middle aged skid row alcoholics. If you've ever been to skid row in a big city, picture the people you saw there.

So if Druitt were the killer, and his motive was revenge for contracting syphilis from prostitutes, then he was very cunning to take his revenge in Whitechapel. Because the police naturally looked carefully at the local cast of characters, as we would expect them to. Druitt was not on the radar there. By killing there, Druitt was trying to beat the system, to keep from getting caught and hanged for murder. And he did get away with it. Until he cracked under the pressure.

All contingent of course on him being JacktR. If he was JacktR. A hypothetical.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

To be fair only "Spider" ignored the primary sources and resisted.

Alone among the police Macnaghten not only had some close familiarity with homosexuals, or at least homosexual practices, he also had an upper class measure of tolerance for it too.

That he, of all those Victorian cops would have been suspicious of Druitt for being gay, and that sexually insane is another expression for gay -- in Mac's description of Druitt -- is hilariously off-track, but conforms to the Orthodox line.

I agree, Roy, there is no reason for Druitt to go to the logistically awkward East End, let alone keep going back there, except for the general statement that mad people do mad things. It is why I subscribe to Marxist Tom Cullen's deranged-social-reformer theory of 1965--another unforgivable transgression.

[Amanda]

Well....

Hi Guys,

Let's put things in perspective here. We're talking about an era where sexual promiscuity and erotica just wasn't a topic of conversation.

Druitt (or anyone else for that matter) could have been labelled as 'sexually insane' simply because someone caught him in what they considered to be an unnatural act. That could have been any number of things from homosexual relations to bondage, but it's quite easy to imagine how such 'shocking' behaviour would have been digested and a series of 'Chinese Whispers' about his 'sexual insanity' would begin.

I am not suggesting that Druitt was of completely sound mind, but I do think that the 'sexually insane' tag should be taken with caution.
There were plenty of institutions housing patients who were either suffering from sexual insanity or became sexually insane according to their physicians. In the latter case it was sometimes a term used to express the individuals desire to masturbate or medical staff noticing erections at 'inappropriate' times.

Let's face it, if a Victorian time-travelling doctor were to peek through a modern day bedroom window, 50% of the population would be branded as 'sexually insane'.
I eagerly await criticism for this post.
Amanda

[Rosella]

You won't get any criticism from me, Amanda. We don't know whether Druitt was gay or not. However, IF he had been caught say, embracing a pupil at his school, that would have been enough for the headmaster and his (Montague's) brother to have ascribed sexual insanity to the poor man.

We know that homosexuality was regarded as a certifiable mental illness throughout the first half of the twentieth century. If there was the slightest hint of what would have been thought an effeminate manner even, relatives, especially male ones, would have been pursing their lips in disgust!