The insane medical student - a police theory from 1894

[Bailey]

I checked the Lyttelton Times (31 January 1895, p. 6), and the article published there, under the title "THE REAL RIPPER", contains nothing beyond what was quoted by the Timaru Herald the following day. Above that article was one on the Saunderson case, and above it at the head of the column was this:
"[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENTS.]
LONDON, Dec. 14."

That's the same date given by the Tuapeka Times in attributing an almost identical report to the "EVENING STAR'S CORRESPONDENT". I suppose the likelihood is that the report originated with a news agency.

I haven't as yet had a chance to do much about looking into this, but I guess that's one less step

B.

[Chris]

Here is an extract from an article written by Frederick Cunliffe-Owen, under the nom-de-plume "Ex-Attache", published in the Butte Weekly Miner on 2 December 1897 and posted on jtrforums.com by Howard Brown and Chris Scott:
Incidentally it may be mentioned that it was at Broadmoor that the blue-blooded perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders is now admitted by the authorities to have breathed his last, and it is likewise to Broadmoor that will be consigned without trial the well-born and hitherto successful member of the bar whose homicidal mania has now been ascertained by the police to have led him to perpetrate the mysterious murder of Miss Camp, on the Suburban London railroad, last spring, and likewise to put to death in an equally unaccountable fashion a young woman whose body was found some six weeks ago at Windsor. It is probable that his true name will be kept from the public precisely in the same way as that of the author of the "Jack the Ripper" series of murders.

Whether it fits in with some or all of the above reports, I'm not sure, but there are obviously some points of contact. It's particularly close to Forbes Winslow's version of the story, which describes the suspect as being "of good family", and (in one article, in 1898) as having died in Broadmoor. The theme of the Butte Weekly Miner article is the secrets of aristocratic families, so the author may have been exaggerating his reported social status a bit.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Chris,

Frederick Cunliffe-Owen's social status was just fine. His mother, Jenny Von Reitzenstein, daughter of Baron Fritz von Reitzenstein of Prussia, and his wife, Marguerite Countess du Panty-et-de-Sourdis, had impeccable pedigrees.

Regards,

Simon

[Chris]

Frederick Cunliffe-Owen's social status was just fine. His mother, Jenny Von Reitzenstein, daughter of Baron Fritz von Reitzenstein of Prussia, and his wife, Marguerite Countess du Panty-et-de-Sourdis, had impeccable pedigrees.

Sorry - I meant exaggerating the social status of the suspect (from "of good family" to "blue-blooded"), not exaggerating his own.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Chris,

Sorry, I misunderstood you.

This is a fascinating thread, but other than enjoying the urban legend aspect of these reports I don't believe any value should be attached to them as they are all little more than Chinese whisper variants of the basic premise contained in Macnaghten's memorandum–

"A much more rational theory is that . . . he immediately committed suicide, or, as a possible alternative, was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations, that he was by them confined in some asylum."

Here we see circumvention of the legal system by dint of a family privately incarcerating one of its own. And we see a progression over the years by this particular suspect variant moving up the social ladder from being of good family to blue-blooded aristocrat. Throw in a doctor, a Polish Jew and a Russian and we have the genesis for all variations on the most popular theories. Add to this the fact that many people, including retired policemen, further added to the confusion by claiming an intimate knowledge or dramatic connection with the case and it soon becomes apparent we're on a fool's errand. Truth was the victim in the stampede for a slice of the JtR pie.

Put all the stories together, pick them all apart and we'll still not be left with anything of worth. Those who knew the truth weren't telling. Instead they left the world a tangle of lies, half-truths, rumours and evasions. And a damn fine job they made of it.

Who and, more importantly, why is the real matter for our consideration.

Regards,

Simon

[protohistorian]

I suspect you are right Simon save for the bit about those that knew. Suppose no one knew, investigatory appearances were maintained for pr purposes until they conflicted with a reality like cost, and then the show was shut down piece meal. I do not see anything that concretely points to anyone "knowing", and as you say, everyone had an opinion. Dave

[Chris]

It's particularly close to Forbes Winslow's version of the story, which describes the suspect as being "of good family", and (in one article, in 1898) as having died in Broadmoor.

Howard Brown recently posted yet another version of the Forbes Winslow story from the New York World of 8 September 1895:

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=10210

This goes into a bit more detail than the New York Times article a week earlier, though most of it is the familiar story of Winslow's suspect. It adds that the suspect is in Broadmoor, which is odd in view of the fact that it goes on to say "His name or the asylum in which he is confined the doctor refuses to divulge." It also claims that the suspect was originally arrested for attempted suicide (an echo of Druitt?). The same detail is later mentioned in Winslow's memoirs (1910), but by that time he has changed his mind again, and concluded that the "insane medical student" is not the same as his suspect (or, naturally, as Jack the Ripper).

[Jonathan H]

Bangor Daily Whig and Courier
Maine, U.S.A.
17 January 1895

Jack the Ripper Dead?

In connection with young Saunderson's insane crime and the Kensington stabbings the authorities have been extremely alarmed lest another Jack the Ripper scare should seize upon the popular mind. This led them recently to make the important announcement that they have reason to believe that the author of the Jack the Ripper crimes has been several years in his grave.

London Correspondent


What announcement?

This is just Macnaghten trying to have it both ways.

To let the press know, or certain carefully chosen reporters, that the 'police' knew that the fiend was deceased, without revealing any information about the Ripper which could trigger a libel suit from the Druitt family, and also ruthlessly conceal the embarrassing fact that this 'protean maniac' was unknown to police until 'some years after' after he killed himself.

Yet during the 1890's bits and pieces of Druitt and the lesser suspect Kosminski -- lesser from Macnaghten's point of view -- had begun to leak, becoming a tabloid mutation.

Abberline could only make sense of this, in 1903, by affirming that there was only one, English medico who was a contemporaneous suspect of 1888, who was investigated by Scotland Yard, and became the subject of a report to the Home Office. That is the 'vanished' insane, third medical student: Sanders.

That is why Abberline keeps referring to the 'young doctor' and 'student' which is not what either Griffiths or Sims were writing [eg. 'prime of life'].

Sims had been briefed by Macnaghten, and/or Griffiths [all three were members of the 'Our Society' gentleman's crime club] that the middle-aged 'Dr D' was the subject of a 'final' and 'conclusive' Home Office Report, that he was contemporaneous to the 1888 investigation, that he was in all probability Jack the Ripper.

Understandably Abberline knew nothing of Druitt, and so fitted these details -- contemporaneous, disappeared, medico, insane -- into what he did know about Sanders, which is fair enough.

That the un-named Druitt was not known to police between 1888 and early 1891 was the true secret of the Ripper mystery, not the identity of the murderer -- from Mac's point of view.

This allegedly definitive 'Report' [about 'Dr D'] being furiously debated between Sims and Abberline was by the Commissioner himself, Macnaghten by 1903, and so Sims arrogantly dismisses Abberline's dismissal of the un-named Druitt [a real detective who had put in the long, frustrating hours on the Ripper case].

Using gentlemanly sleight-of-hand -- assuming fellow gentlemen Grffiths and Sims were not in on it -- Macnaghten conjured and cemented, via literary cronies, the 'Drowned Doctor' paradigm for the Edwardian Era, plus the lesser suspects: the insane Polish Jew and the insane Russian doctor [in his memoirs he dropped the latter pair of 'fig-leaves' completely].

This is of course a theory based on making sense of the contradictory sources, one which leaves no loose ends -- until another source is found/published which upends it.

[Chris]

One more insane medical student story that could be added to the collection appeared in the Grey River Argus (New Zealand), of 30 June 1910 - apparently copied from the Pall Mall Gazette. The story was seized on by George Kebbell to support his theory that William Grant was the murderer, but the relevant part of it is below. Kebbell's interpretation can be found in the full article here:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=75555&postcount=37

[Chris]

In Examiner number 4 are printed the final two instalments of Jabez S. Balfour's "Crimson Crimes" series on the Ripper murders, which originally appeared in the Weekly Despatch in 1906, together with a discussion by Tom Wescott.

The article originally published on 11 November 1906 opens with details of three suspects, one of them an inmate of Broadmoor. I hope it's in order for me to quote the relevant couple of sentences here:
"Another man to whom these terrible crimes have been imputed is to-day an inmate of the criminal lunatic asylum at Broadmoor. This man is, I believe, an undoubted lunatic, and the insane boastings in which he from time to time has indulged, combined with a singular familiarity with the East End of London, are the principal grounds for imputing the crimes to him."

Obviously there's very little detail to go on in this story. But it differs from the other Broadmoor stories quoted above - those linked to Forbes Winslow and that written by Frederick Cunliffe-Owen in 1897 - in that the suspect is thought to be still alive (the same respect in which Balfour's suspect differs from Thomas Cutbush).

In his discussion article, Tom Wescott suggests that Balfour may be referring to the same suspect as Cunliffe-Owen, writing on 2 December 1897 in the Butte Weekly Miner. He then argues in turn that Cunliffe-Owen's "blue-blooded perpetrator" may be the same man referred to in a New York Times article by Rowland Strong published a few weeks before (incidentally, according to the online archive of the NYT, the publication date was indeed 24 October 1897, though the article was dated 12 October). This mentioned a lunatic confined in a madhouse in Scotland, who bore "a distinguished name," and who was identified by David A. Green as John Barlas.

I'm not entirely convinced that Cunliffe-Owen's account was based on Strong's. That would require him to have made two important changes when copying the story - from a living suspect to a dead one, and from a Scottish madhouse to Broadmoor. On the other hand, his story may well have been written even sooner than Tom realised after Strong's appeared. It refers to a murder at Windsor having taken place some "six weeks ago." In fact that was the murder of Emma Matilda Johnson on 15 September, which suggests that the story had originally been written perhaps a month before being republished by the Butte Weekly Miner. If so, it would have been written about a week after Strong's article appeared.

But on the whole, I'm still inclined to connect Cunliffe-Owen's "blue-blooded perpetrator" in Broadmoor with the earlier stories about a Broadmoor suspect who came from "a well-to-do and respectable family" [New York World, 8 September 1895]. Of course, the other thing we know now is that another part of Cunliffe-Owen's story - about the police suspecting an insane barrister of having murdered Elizabeth Camp in 1897 - did have some truth in it.

[Chris]

On the subject of Frederick Cunliffe-Owen, who wrote as "Ex-Attache" in the Butte Weekly Miner in 1897 and as a "Veteran Diplomat" in the New York Times in 1910, here is another of his productions, again as "Ex-Attache," from the Chicago Tribune of 19 July 1908, written in response to the Harry Thaw case.

Obviously he was an early believer in recycling - he repeats the statement about the "blue-blooded perpetrator" of the Whitechapel murders having died at Broadmoor, and he also updates the comments made in 1897 about the barrister suspected of having committed two other murders to claim that he had been committed to Broadmoor. (In reality, the barrister in question, Charles Augustin Prideaux, had been an inmate of private asylums in Isleworth and near Bath.) Moreover this updated version was apparently produced in 1898 or 1899 (the dates are inconsistent) and when he came to reuse it again in 1908 he didn't bother to make any further changes.

The anecdotes about Broadmoor patients would themselves be reused in his later New York Times article in 1910, together with the claim about the Ripper having been committed to Broadmoor (which would be attributed to Anderson, with the date of his incarceration confusingly implied to be 1904 or 1905!). The historical impossibilities inherent in the Broadmoor anecdotes were discussed by Simon Wood - who also identified a "Veteran Diplomat" as Cunliffe-Owen - in Ripperologist, number 109.

To say that Cunliffe-Owen was an inaccurate journalist would obviously be a huge understatement. But he did somehow find out that the police suspected an insane barrister of having murdered Elizabeth Camp, so we can't dismiss out of hand his claim that a patient at Broadmoor had been suspected of being the Ripper.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

Thank you for posting this. It is most interesting...

I note also the line..

"... In fact it may be mentioned that it was at Broadmoor that the blue blooded perpitrator of the Whitechapel murders is now admitted by the authorities to have breathed his last..."

The earliest known reference to A Royal connection, PAV, I wonder? Is this where the rumour and conjecture started perhaps?

(my italics)

best wishes

Phil

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Phil,

What year did PAV die? I can't remember. Interesting thought though.

Chris,

Thanks for the PM drawing my attention to this thread. You're on top of things, as usual, but considering how closely they were published, I'm not to quick to dismiss Barlass as the 'blue-blooded inmate', since he could arguably be called blue-blooded and had just that month been discussed as a Ripper suspect, and was indeed in an asylum. But as I said in my article, it's possible another man fit these details and timing, but to say that we need a name for him.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Phil Carter]

Hello Tom,

He died 14 January 1892. He was engaged to be married to Mary of Teck in late 1891. Just a few weeks later, he died in an influenza pandemic. Mary later married his younger brother, George, who became King George V in 1910.

Best wishes

Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

This "intimate friend" of PAV died from drinking carbloic acid a month before the announcement of his marriage to Mary of Teck.



Regards,

Simon