Possible or not

[GUT]

Just mulling....

WE know that Mac thought Montie was a good candidate for JtR.

We know that in the MM it is said that his family suspected him.

We have speculated that Mac came by his "Private Information" after he joined the police.

Is t at all possibility that the family contacted Macnaghten during that time between early December when William is told Montague is missing and his body being found. Not as a policeman but in some private capacity just as someone who was well connected.

Has anyone ever found a link between the families that could make this fit.

Guess I'm a bit bored and thinking outside the box.

[Jonathan H]

Yes, those links have been found though in 1891, not 1888 or 1889:

http://www.amazon.com.au/Jack-Ripper-Case-Solved-1891-Hainsworth-ebook/dp/B017DZQS82/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=14ACN4AJHAE5N2KCKRFE

Sir Melville Macnaghten, the police chief, and George R. Sims, the popular writer, were close friends with Colonel Sir Vivian Majendie (knighted 1895) who was Chief Inspector of Munitions at the Home Office (a brave military commander and then bomb disposal expert, he was as famous as Sims), For some years the three upper crust gents went to the boxing every Monday night, after enjoying dinner at the Macnaghten's.

Unknown for 125 years, however, is that Colonel Majendie was also related (by a first cousin's daughter's marriage to Vicar Charles Druitt) to the family of the Ripper. Majendie also had another cousin who was a master at Winchester at the same time Montie attended as a student, and this cousin was, furthermore, friends with Georgiana Druitt (Montie's older sister). Majendie also had a brother-in-law who worked in Queen Victoria's inner, bureaucratic circle.

The family's terrible secret leaked via the local MP in Dorset, Henry Farquharson, in early 1891, either because he was told, directly, or it leaked along the Tory constituency grapevine. Macnaghten met first with the MP, and then with the Colonel, who could introduce him to the Vicar, who was related, by marriage, to the distinguished family of a close chum.

The Majendie breakthrough -- along with the discovery of Farquharson -- lays to rest, once and for all, the assumption from 1959, that hardened in the 1960's into the conventional wisdom lasting to this day, that Macnaghten was under-informed, or misinformed, or mis-recalled the most basic information of his chosen suspect. It was always an unlikely assumption -- based on all of the sources about this police chief

Now we know why Macnaghten and Sims went to such lengths to disguise the Druitt solution for the Edwardian public; partly to enhance the rep of the Yard (we almost caught him -- not true); partly to avoid everybody ending up in the libel courts; partly to shield the Druitt family from ruin -- but mostly to protect the family name of a close friend.

"The Sun" wrote on Feb 13th 1894, defending why it would not name their Ripper (Thomas Cutbush); in order to protect the alleged murderer's family "some of them in positions which would make them a target for the natural curiosity -- for the unreasoning reprobation which would pursue any person even remotely connected with so hideous a monstrosity, and we must abstain, therefore, from giving his name in the interest of these unfortunate, innocent, and respectable connections".

Guy Logan, who provided a fact-and-fiction version of the Druitt solution in "The True History of Jack the Ripper" (1905), wrote a very similar warning: "The inner history of the unspeakable crimes associated with the murder-name of Jack the Ripper is known to very few. The relatives of that monumental criminal are still, many of them, in the land of the living, and I am consequently precluded from giving the exact name of the monster who haunted London's East End in 1888."

Macnaghten had a personal motive, or bias, to debunk the Druitt solution, e.g. to avoid embarrassment for a close VIP friend. He judged the evidence was too compelling -- it was the Ripper.

This is an historical solution: it depends on the reliability of that police chief.

[Jonathan H]

Nessie was a model!

I knew this would be the reaction, or rather non-reaction and total non-debate, here, because of the way so many blackballed the identification of Henry Farquharson in 2008.

This is a long-standing and very human phenomenon; the inability to even consider that a cherished paradigm maybe flawed, or even dead wrong.

As in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk

and,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Kdc0LLSW8

and, at 39:36:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=074YKv7Owzs

and,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQcBQc3oaKg

and,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDLqJ1Dsw9w

and,

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/loch-ness-sci

[GUT]

But of course your answer has nothing whatsoever to do with the question.

Has anyone found an earlier connection?

If you haven't fine thanks.

If you have, what?

[Jonathan H]

Doesn't it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Kdc0LLSW8

[Mayerling]

I knew this would be the reaction, or rather non-reaction and total non-debate, here, because of the way so many blackballed the identification of Henry Farquharson in 2008.

This is a long-standing and very human phenomenon; the inability to even consider that a cherished paradigm maybe flawed, or even dead wrong.

As in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk

and,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Kdc0LLSW8

and, at 39:36:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=074YKv7Owzs

and,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQcBQc3oaKg

and,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDLqJ1Dsw9w

and,

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/loch-ness-sci

Hi Jon,

While the Farquharson matter certainly has some pros and cons arguers here, it isn't the reason for the lack of interest. It's more unfair to you and other real researchers here.

We have been deluged (as you may have noticed - and certainly not joined in on) by a jerk who is pretentious and insulting but has a dreadful habit of drawing us into a series of threads he keeps creating on his selected "clues" (I call them "crumbs") regarding what he claims is the correct possible theory of the Ripper's identity and the causes of his crime spree (spite and hatred of the police and the Lord Mayor of London, and a desire to have everybody - especially women - fear him) without giving us the actual theory.
He won't, luring us by curiosity into observing what he has decided to give us, but ending with us sputtering helplessly (but sarcastically) at his obvious flawed reasonings (he keeps jumping from careful forensic science, to academically correct methods to metaphysical or metaphorical meanings of arcane and obscure nature in messages). This "Pierre" has poisoned the board, and if he is a troll he is a successful one. Otherwise why wouldn't GUT's interesting question (it is, after all, an interesting one) not attract more attention her. Aside from Geoff (GUT) and yourself, I am only the third person all day who has popped up on this thread. But seventy five messages popped up on a thread concerning "Pierre"s inquiry about the possible profession of the Ripper (what his suspect would be or was - he never is clear about this). And he has put down 32 other threads since last October.
Maybe you have seen them - but they are a time consuming mess to us.

Anyway, I'm still looking for a copy of your book on Druitt, but haven't had any luck finding it. Hopefully I may this year.

I will keep looking for your comments here and elsewhere on the Board, and add my own comments (if I have any).

Happy New Year, by the way.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

From his second post it was obvious that Pierre is a pest and a prankster.

If you take him seriously, he wins because wasting others' time is his objective.


Farquhrason was the missing bridging source that had eluded Farson, Cullen, and everybody else who was actually looking for it (not many).

By the way the answer to GUT's question is a clear no.

This is according to early and late primary sources about the events of 1888 to 1891. The Mp leaked in 1891 and Macnaghten said the solution came to him a few years later.

I was trying to show him in vain what we do know. But he's not interested, like nearly everybody else.

[drstrange169]

Hello Jonathan,

Despite working for a rival network, I managed to see your "TT" appearance last week, you cut a fine figure of a man!

http://www.todaytonightadelaide.com.au/stories/search

[Jonathan H]

Hey thanks.

That's quite a compliment considering I thought I had a great face for radio.

Cheers

[caz]

Hi Jonathan, Jeff, All,

I always try to keep up with the Druitt threads and add a comment (if generally unwelcome) if I have one.

What I fail to understand is why anyone bothers with Pierre if they find him nothing but a time-wasting nuisance. I haven't read any of his posts since well before Christmas so I'm way behind with what all the fuss can still be about. Surely, if nobody responded, his own interest in communicating his thoughts - or merely trying to wind people up - would soon fade.

Love,

Caz
X

[Wickerman]

... Otherwise why wouldn't GUT's interesting question (it is, after all, an interesting one) not attract more attention her. Aside from Geoff (GUT) and yourself, I am only the third person all day who has popped up on this thread.

Interesting, I looked in shortly after Jonathan's reply (post 2), but I felt GUT's question may have been a little too specialized, very few on here would know enough to be able to answer - perhaps I took the question too literally.

I thought Jonathan was the only one able to reply, then shortly after, I noticed a further post from Jonathan, but this time slightly despondent and laying blame for the lack of interest on the rejection of Farquharson.
I didn't think that was the reason.

[Jonathan H]

Pierre who ...?

God no, I am not despondent at all.

Quite the opposite, W-Man. I'elated.

If a real breakthrough is made about a subject that has become a Buff-world, then you can measure its authenticity and significance by the lack of debate and interest from that quarter.

If you make a fundamental discovery (Farquharson; Majendie) then, again, the deafening silence or blackballing effect (I posted a number of dramatizations of this kind of 'blaspheme') by most of the hard-core on a subject is an inverse measure of said discovery's worth.

It is not, I hasten to add, a deep measure. It is inherently shallow as it is based on hurt feelings and panicked indignation, but it is not nothing either.
To a lesser extent I saw the same paradigmatic resistance in a recent review in an online magazine.

Every modern Ripper theory -- even a theory that says nobody was identified -- hangs from the same perilously slender thread; that Macnaghten was ignorant, certainly hopelessly inaccurate, and therefore he and his suspect can be definitely debunked and safely dismissed.

If that thread, however, is severed then it means the identity of the killer has been known -- broadly as an un-named English gentleman and not some handy, poor foreigner-- since 1898, and by his true vocation since 1959, and by his actual name since 1965. It took until 1991 (MP Sources); 1993 (Dr. Tumblety and Sims' sources); 2008 (Farquharson and the Vicar); and 2014 (Colonel Majendie and more Sims) for the missing link sources between Druitt and the 'Drowned Doctor' to be identified,

Overthrowing everything that a tiny few think they know and understand about a particular subject -- intimately and obsessively and in some cases professionally -- is, I appreciate, never going to be easy, pleasant, welcome or successful.

Last youtube analogy; A.J.P. Taylor's 1960's attempt to overturn the conventional view of the origins of the Second World War, now broadly accepted but initially treated as ludicrous, fanciful and insulting (sound familiar?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUngG2CRYdY

[Rosemary]

As once was

I have no problem, newbie that I am, with unexpected. What I DO have a problem with is 'evidence' presented as a Zen koan. I see no historiographical method in evidence as such.