Killer description and Suspect appearance

[Hunter]

The idea that because senior police disagreed automatically cancels out each of their opinions is a reasonable line to take but not the only one. Since there was only one murderer it maybe that only one senior policeman really knew what he was talking about, and the others 'only thought they knew'.
.

It could have been Maj. Smith who knew what he was talking about when he wrote that the Ripper "...completely beat me and every Police officer in London." and that "...I have no more idea now where he lived than I had twenty years ago."

That may just as well explain the various opinions of other senior police officials; as simplistic as it may seem.

[Natalie Severn]

It could have been Maj. Smith who knew what he was talking about when he wrote that the Ripper "...completely beat me and every Police officer in London." and that "...I have no more idea now where he lived than I had twenty years ago."

That may just as well explain the various opinions of other senior police officials; as simplistic as it may seem.

Dear Hunter....I couldnt help laughing out loud when I read this.....! Good old Major Henry! He knew what nonsense they were talking just like Abberline did!

[Natalie Severn]

Jonathan,
But you have chosen to treat with only the two "senior"policemen who claimed to know-or said they had a good idea they knew, who the ripper was.
Why have you left out the equally important Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police,Major Henry Smith?

Major Smith,later Sir Henry Smith ,was of equal rank to these other two you know.And he was actually there at the time , unlike Macnaghten who didnt arrive until 6 months after the Autumn of Terror,and Anderson who had gone missing . In fact, Major Smith attended the Catherine Eddowes Crime Scene not long after she was found murdered and saw the situation for himself.
I mean you can"t just pick and choose who you happen to think carried weight and indeed the "City Police Suspect" who some claim was Kosminski, was actually someone who would have been within Major Smith"s jurisdiction,so had there been an any credibility to this storyMajor Smith would have known about it,wouldnt he?And he never even gave it a mention.

"We didnt know then and we dont know now," he stated in 1910.My bets are on him telling the truth!

[Jonathan H]

To Norma

Yes, perhaps Henry Smith was right and Macnaghten-Anderson-Littlehild were mistaken in their memories.

What I want you to consider though is is that the Ripper mystery might include a vital layer that every one of my articles tries to argue.

That information came to Macnaghten [and Anderson] which bypassed every other police officer. It went straight to the Deputy Head of CID who told nobody, except probably his immediate superior.

That means Smith, Abberline and Reid were not told. The first they leanred of Druitt was in Griffiths in 1898 where his indentity is semi-fictionalised and his name witheld.

Nobody was told because the information was so embarrassing -- and of no practical value.

The MP Farquharson and Macnaghten were both Etonians. The perfect social and class connection to have a 'quiet word' in which Mac would have told him to both shut-up in public -- and tell him everything. I believe that, rightly or wrongly, Mac for the rest of his life belieevd that this was the solution to the Ripper mystery.

Why would Abberline, Smith and Reid be privy to such information, arrving in early 1891, which was neither filed nor disseminated.

Information about which the police could no nothing. Druitt was an excruciating suspect for a number of reasons, the most imprtant of which is that he could not be arrested/charged and therefore not be officially investigated.

At around the same time -- and the link here is missing -- information about Kosminski arrived and Anderson preferred this suspect to Druitt [if he ever knew about him at all since he never, ever refers to him in any surviving source].

It is perhaps to be expected that Anderson preferred Kosminski for whilst he was not, I think, an anti-Semite, it would have been hard for him to coutenace a fellow Gentile, Oxbridge Gentleman, an Anglican, a Big 'C' Conservative as the fiend. Not impossible, but why bother to face such a ghastly solution when a sexually insane, low-class lunatic, with unreliable, degenerate relatives is ready to hand.

The question is not how could Smith not know about such a hot suspect, but rather how on Earth would he know ...?

I totally agree with you that he would know if Druitt and Kosminski had been contemporneous suspects -- which is wny the issue became confused. Anderson wroite about the un-named Kosminski as if he was the prime suspect of 1888. This was sincere mythologising about which Smith was correct to dismiss as a joke.

The fact that Smith does not know about Druitt and Kosminski after 1891 is backed up by the other sources which strongly indicate that they were too-late suspects, never the subject of any kind of official investigation -- a fact mostly admitted to by Mac in his memoirs of 1914 who debunked the 'Drowned Doctor' mythos of his pal Sims [whose source was Macnaghten?].

Plus, I do not think you are fully taking into account that Macnaghten was a member of the upper classes and Smith and the others were not. Mac was very affable, but the idea of filling in Henry Smith about devastating information about a Super-suspect, who could never be brought to justice, who was a Tory Gentleman and Oxonian -- why would he do such a thing? He wouldn't and didn't.

You ask a really good question: am I cherry-picking the top cops I like at the expsnse of ones whose testimonies do not suit my theory? I don't think so. Anderson and Macnaghten, for reasons of rank, class, and being the receivers of certain under-the-radar info, are quite different from every other senior policemen of that era.

They were ruling elite administrators, political operators at the spearhead point between the elected politicians in the govt. and the Home Office, and the career policemen who actually went out and caught criminals.

[Natalie Severn]

thanks Jonathan,
I need to consider your post ,
One thing I will say though is that Macnaghten wasnt particularly superior in class than the well educated Scotsman from Edinburgh,Smith. Smith was certainly a "club man", one who adored to go huntin" shootin" and fishin",very much like Macnaghten into the old school tie and all that .And Macnaghten"s folk were in Tea in India---in fact he had been running a tea plantation before being made a police constable in 1889. So not exactly aristocracy.
Robert Anderson seems to have married money.He and his brothers were protestant Irish solicitors and worked originally in Dublin Castle.However Robert did marry a "Lady" someone I think.
But I dont think I accept this stuff about the big secret.I firmly believe that if they had known who he was we would too.That kind of secret "leaks" out and is either scotched or upheld.It was scotched at birth that one----Robert let his secret out in 1910 and nobody took a blind bit of notice Jonathan.Same with Macnaghten.And there is no evidence at all that Macnaghten knew this Farquharson character well enough to be gossiping with him.He was a very dangerous character Farquharson and thought nothing of assassinating the character of others---as happened,with tragic consequences,regarding a political opponent of his who was fighting the same seat.
By the way ,what makes you think Monty was a Tory?
He was quite a liberal in his earlier youth,according to the debates he took part in.He was probably gay too----maybe a bit more cutting edge than you think!

[Hunter]

Norma,

I'm just a simple man, but I figure it this way... The murders ended. The murderer wasn't apprehended. The higher officials were left with a few intangible suspects while the investigators on the ground were still searching and bringing in anybody suspicious they could find. Joseph Issacs was taken in on Dec. 8 because he matched Hutchinson's description of all things. Nearly two years later Sadler was placed in a lineup; not just for the murder of Coles, but the 1888 murders as well. After that the trail went cold- well, it probably already was- then the case closed in 92 with everyone still scratching their balding heads and trying to put some kind of finality to it.

Some of them had read too many Conan Doyle stories and imagined themselves as super slueths in the following years, expounded by the belief that they had garnered privileged information, though the information they do devulged is largely inaccurate. Some had a reputation to protect so they picked somebody that would fit Dr. Bonds profile. Some probably picked a name out of a hat. Ol' Henry probably read all of this and sat back in his easy chair, lit his pipe, and chuckled.

We scratch our heads about what they did while we are still doing the same thing today; playing Sherlock Holmes; stroking our egoes with our theories; pulling our suspects out of a hat and some of us even conjecturing that because everything was so convoluted that there had to be a conspiracy.

I must have a soft spot for ol' Henry when I read some of the posts here and chuckle myself.

Maybe he was just a simple man too. He may not have been privy to the information that some of the others claimed to have obtained, but he was likely the only one to have died with a clear conscious.

[Natalie Severn]

thanks Hunter,
Well he would have loved you! He liked nothing better than talking about shootin" game and Fishin"! But deep down there is a sense that he was a very astute man and when needed quite fair minded .But there are also some ridiculous bits in there mind!----as with all three of them actually.A bit breathtaking!
People who think of themselves simple rarely are Hunter-usually they are wiser than most!
Thanks for your post,
Best Wishes
Norma

[DVV]

Hi Hunter,

...and this clear conscious did remember the bloodstained water in Dorset Street, after Eddowes murder...

Amitiés,
David

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Hunter,

...and this clear conscious did remember the bloodstained water in Dorset Street, after Eddowes murder...

Amitiés,
David

Hey David,
That is actually very possible.Dorset Street was/is no more than two minutes from Goulston Street walking quickly.
But Smith probably did make it up!

[Hunter]

Hi David,

Good Point.

They all seemed to play themselves up. Human nature I guess. But at least Henry was sport enough to admit when they were whipped.

[Jonathan H]

Yes, good point Norma.

On the other hand, Mac went to the uber-exclusive Eton, and that makes him a Toff if not a blue blood like Farqhuarson. Mac in effect 'declassed' himself by becoming a police administrator rather than another exec cog in the East India conglomerate.

Certainly he was always a working member of the Upper Bourgeiosie, not a lazy aristo.

Of course, Anderson believed he was the very epitome of Anglican moral rectitude and uni educated, intellectual superiority. In his memoirs he is proud of the fact that when he raided gambling dens he went after the rich men's clubs first -- which is arguably admirable. I can't imagine Mac doing that, at least not before a friendly tip-off to his affluent pals at the Garrick Club.

And speaking of Toffs, just look at the wariness of the current Leader of the Opposition in Britain [and fellow Oxonian and Druitt look-alike] David Cameron in keeping his upper crust resume as far removed as possible from his projected image as a bicycling, family man, Greenie.

I stand by the overall point of my previous post.

When Abberline picked Chapman in 1903, and disparaged the 'drowned medical student' and the 'locked-up lunatic' suspects he did not realise that these originated with his former bosses. He thought they were tabloid inventions. It never occured to him that Mac and Anderson were doing what he was doing; chosoing too-late suspects. He was so ignorant that he tells the reporter he is going to write to the Assistant Commissioner, by then Mac, to excitedly relate his Chapman theory.

That's the giveaway that Abberline was ignorant of the Mac Report ,official version. As Paul Begg argued in 'The Facts' Abberline is perhaps confusing 'the drowned young doctor' -- who was the subject of some 'Home Office Report' says Sims -- with his own inconclusive report about the third, missing medical student.

It's not Abberline's fault he was confused and in the dark.

This was deliberate.

Firstly, after 1891 Druitt and Kosminski were known only to Mac and Anderson [the Mac Report was never sent to th Home Office], and secondly, these two operators began redacting thir preferred suspects back into 1888.

A much more satisfying yarn -- spoiled only by there being, quite bizarrely, two entirely different Rippers?!

I argue that Anderson did this clumsily, egocentrically -- yet sincerely -- the story escalating by 1910 to a Judas who let down English justice. Not a single police officer, certainly not Swanson, backed his 'I Won Waterloo' myth, at least in public.

How did Anderson deal with the rude but accurate scoffing by Abberline, Smith and Reid that the un-named Kosminski was a prime suspect in 1888? No doubt he scoffed back, thinking that all their memories were at fault -- whilst his remained as shiny and pristine as a bullet.

The much more sophisticated and playfully deceitful Mac also redacted his suspect back into the 1888 investigation, but at a sly remove, via Major Griffiths and George Sims. Then in 1913 -- with a straight face -- Mac claimed he never had, and never would, reveal a thing about this suspect, only to subsequently debunk the idea -- which he had himself set up -- that the un-named Druitt was really a contemporaneous suspect in those cheeky, shell-game memoirs of 1914.

[DVV]

Hi David,

Good Point.

They all seemed to play themselves up. Human nature I guess. But at least Henry was sport enough to admit when they were whipped.

I agree, but would mention Swanson who did not talk much, and didn't publish his memoirs. Good point for him.

Amitiés,
David

[Hunter]

Yes David,

I would also add that his famous marginalia was to accent Anderson's assertion, not to necessarily agree with it.

[Jonathan H]

You're right Norma.

We have no direct evidence that Mac spoke to Farquharson at all.

No [authentic] diary entry in which Mac writes: 'Just saw that prize chump Farquy, who could never keep his mouth shut about us smoking after lights out when we were in the Lower Fifth, but My Goodness, the yarn he told about this Druitt chap, a real Jekyll and Hyde no less, was unexpectedly compelling ...'

I am going on the balance of probabilities that being at Eton together, and that the discreet phrase 'private inf.' maybe to conceal the identity of a loathed Tory politician from a Liberal Home Sec., and that the police would investigate such a strange story involving a fellow officer of state.

I don't mean that Druitt was a Tory. Just that because his family were active in local Tory politics, and he and his brother did legal work for the Party, he may have been perceived as a Conservative. That's what the Liberals would have done if they had managed to unearth this potential, muckraking scandal against a Tory muckraker [I think Druitt was a 'deranged social reformer' not a law-abiding Conservative].

There is no surviving evidence that Druitt was gay. I think that the single, dodgy primary source which claims he was dismissed fror 'serious trouble' may have about as much validity as the single American tabloid which claims that Tumbelty was once married to a harlot and had a creepy collection of uteri. No other primary source mentions his dismissal, or a hint of scandal. His suicide is inexplicable.

On the other hand, Druitt may have been sacked whilst alive simply over the fact that he had two competing jobs. Or he may have been sacked because he was unaccountably absent -- eg. dead -- and this embarrassment for the school over fiting a suicided gentleman was quietly and discreetly dropped in the media. I think that a scandal involving the students, or Valentine, or Valentine's wife, would have been hushed up with a discreet resignation. Or, conversely, have involved calling in the police if it involved a student.

Druitt is described by Macnaghten as being 'sexually insane', that is gaining sexual pleasure from inflicting violence, and of probably having a diseazed body as well as mind. Whether this refers to 'epilpetic mania' as in the North Country Vicar's enigmatic story [which may not be referring to Druitt at all], or perhaps to syphillus is unknown?

[Jonathan H]

Macnaghten and Druitt:

The reason I subscribe to the theory that Druitt is the best of the three police suspects is because Mac's memory does not seem to be impaired by 1914.

Instead 'Days of My Years' trotting out Sims' 'shilling shocker' of the demented drowned doctor, whom the police had supposedly nearly captured in 1888, Macnaghten rebuffs the claims of his own cronies: Griffiths and Sims.

As in, not a contemporaneous suspect, no mention of him being a doctor, denial he had ever been in an asylum -- we were uselessly pursuing a phantom.

Just imagine if Anderson had written that the Polish Jew suspect was never caught because he was already incarcerated and had been out and about for two years unknown to Scotland Yard?

Macnaghten flies in the face of his expected bias towards the Yard by divulging what matches the primary sources of 1888 to 1891: a prime but too late suspect, one inevitably unknown to the field detectives.

Though it could not be known until decades later he was, in fact, debunking a key element of the 'Aberconway' version of his own Report.

The revelation I had -- for what it is worth -- is that once you compare the memoir with the Mac Report(s) you realise that the latter are deflecting one's attention away from an obvious embarrassment. The issue about Druitt was not whether the family 'believed' or 'suspected', or whether there was the 'shadow of proof' or not.

They are deflecting what the memoir, from the safety of twenty years later and retirement, finally concede; the un-named Druitt was not arrested because of any lack of hard evidence but because he was dead -- long dead.

Therefore, Mac's 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper', the only document he ever committed his own name to about the mystery, does not contradict Reid, Smith, Abberline or what we have on the hunt for Sadler in 1891, but rather supports those sources.

'Some years after' he joined the Yard, intelligence arrived about the only viable suspect. That's a sikly way of saying some years after Druitt had thrown himself in the Thames, thus Mac's joining the Yard is irrelevant [except the self-serving theme that it is not his fault the 'mad miscreant' was so elusive in 1888 -- elusive in life and death].

'The West of England MP' source is most probably the bridge between the sympathetic obituaries regarding the inexplicable suicide of this 'barrister of bright talent' and his unexpected emergence in the Mac Report as a 'sexual maniac' believed by Mac to be the fiend, and by his own family [if you put the two affirmative bits of the versions together].

Mac's affable temperament was to see the best in people, to have everybody happy sipping their tea. He is the last person to crucify a fellow, tragic chap in no position to defend his honour. One would expect him to be bending over backwards to ressure the Druitts that they must be wrong. That we have a foreign wretch in a nuthouse who is much more likely to be the fiend -- even if Mac only half-believed it just to give them some peace of mind. Instead the evidence, as they and he perceived it -- perhaps wrongly -- was just so devastating that he signed of for life abut Montie's guilt; the family 'believed', it was the MP's 'doctrine', Mac was 'certain' and called him 'that fascinating man' but would never reveal his 'secrets'.

And he did and he didn't reveal those secrets.

All this, in character, is all quite different from any other police source on the Ripper.

More later ...