Killer description and Suspect appearance

[Jonathan H]

If you check some earlier posts you will see that I and others have debated this line of thinking, for and against.

I personally think that Mac knew everythin and knew what he was doing -- which is an extreme minority position.

[Jonathan H]

Norma,

I think that initially it was in both Mac and Anderon's interests not to breathe a word about Druitt and Kosminski.

They were embarrassing too-late suspects, and it was embarrassing they disagreed, and Druitt involved a member of the Tory Opposition.

Then in 1894 came Cutbush, and Mac prepared a document if this press rubbush went thermonuclear. A Report for the Home Sec. which would play down their real competing certainties about Druitt and Kosminski, but nevertheless quash the cop's nephew cover-up claim.

It never came to it.

But the following year they arrested Grainger, and Anderson wanted Lawende to have a look at him. Don't bother Mac said, far more certain about his preferred suspect.

Incredibly, Lawende affirmed. Mac reacted with aplomb. Grainger looked like Druiit. No big deal.

Whereas Anderson was furious with Lawende saying 'yes'. That fury would smolder and evolve into the treacherous Jew witness who said 'yes' and yet we could do nothing, though at least the suspect was 'safely caged' -- which was true of Grainger as he went to prison.

Feeling less than perfect, Anderson let the cat out of the bag about the un-named Kosminski the same week. An alarmed Mac begn looking for an avenue in which his never-sent Report -- carefully recalibrated -- could smother this egocentric, sectarian sideshow.

Grffiths book of 1898 supplied that opportunity.

I also think that Mac knew that a media 'timebomb' was going to go off on the anniversary of Druitt's death-burial. Druitt had confessed to a reverend between the time of the Kelly murder and his suicide. He left instructions with another man of the cloth, by 1899 a North Counry Vicar, to publish the true story on the tenth anniversary of the last murder -- which unknown to the public was Kelly not Coles.

The Vicar's story [his full account was unpublished] was one without names and even with details admittedly changed to protect people: 'substantial truth in fictitious form' the unidenified Vicar calls it.

This is of course exactly what Mac will do ahead of the Vicar; disguise Druitt in a fictional and impenetrable identity.

When the Vicar's story came out it went nowhere, dismissed by Sims [in his first Ripper story with the police as heroes] as a silly priest who supposedly heard a dying man's delusional confssion. That is totally inaccurate and unfair to the Vicar's cryptic story.

But by then Sims was, probably unwittingly, Mac's chief propagandist. He had been shown the 'Home Office Report' and was completely turned around from the scathing young reporter who called the police fools to the leading mouthpiece of the 'Drowned Doctor' Super-suspect. He was part of a magic circle supposedly let in on the big secret by affable Mac.

Mac did all this to hide from the public [and the Home Office] that Druitt was a too-late suspect, an element of the story the Vicar was going to inevitably reveal [until his own memoirs of 1914].

Instead the Vicar was soon forgotten, swept aside by Sims 'shilling shocker'. Everybody apparently knew, wrote Sims, that the Blackheath doctor was the fiend; all his pals knew and the cops knew, even independently of each other.

Litlechild smashed all this in his 1913 letter, but it was a private communication, and Sims may simply have ignored its disturbing implication that what he had been really writing for over a decade was 'substantial truth in fictitious form'.

[Natalie Severn]

Jonathan,
Just as you have set out the case for using Macnaghten"s words and Anderson"s to try to unravel and then recycle their meaning, I want to explain why neither man impresses me as having a grip on this 122 year old case.
The case of Catherine Mylett [Rose Mylett as she was known by previously] is of some importance in my view.
Stewart Evans, Debra Arif and Rob Clack have each provided in depth, valuable research on this case.
The reason the Mylett case is so valuable in my opinion is because the death of Mylett took place in late December,three weeks after Druitt"s suicide.
Robert Anderson appears to have gone to very great lengths here to try to prove she was not murdered but died of natural causes and therefore could not have been a victim of Jack the Ripper.
This gives me a clue as to how his mind was working after his return from France in October 1888 to oversee the JtR investigation,which up to that point already had between four and six victims depending on whether you accept the murders of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram----remembering too that the Whitechapel Police File was opened with the murder of Emma Smith.
Robert Anderson claims,in his autobiography TLYOMOL, that "house to house " searches had taken place by police "During my absence abroad and that after discussions it was concluded that the murderer was from the Polish Jewish community----because , he asserted,it was well known such people refused to comply with Gentile Justice.[words to that effect as I dont have any of my books to hand to check this out word for word].
On the day of Mary Kelly"s death,Robert Anderson brought Dr Bond with him to Millers Court to provide a second opinion on that of Dr Phillips and the very next day, ie the 10th November 1888, Dr Bond produced his famous "profile" including a report that emphasised among other things that Jack the Ripper had five victims only and ,even though he had not seen any of the injuries of the previous four victims he decided none showed any evidence that the murderer had had anatomical or surgical skills------this flew in the face of both the findings of Dr Phillips and Dr Brown.
Now I know Dr Phillips was in some doubt about whether Catherine Eddowes was killed by the same man as had killed Annie Chapman, because he saw little evidence of surgical skill in the former case whereas in the case of Annie Chapman he had seen what he thought was very clear evidence of it.But Dr Brown,the City of London Police Surgeon disagreed with him.
To summarise then: Dr Bond"s findings on 10th November gave Robert Anderson the information and ammunition he believed he needed :
a]as to where the killer lived and how he could get rid of blood stains
b] to rule out other murders ---eg to rule out Emma Smith,Martha Tabram and the later in December murder of Rose Mylett.
c] to rule out looking for a student doctor or a doctor [or later a drowned "Dr"!
It was from this point onwards,I believe,that Robert Anderson appears to have believed he knew what kind of homicidal maniac to look for and, importantly , WHERE to look for him and it wasnt Valentine"s School at Blackheath!
I dont believe Robert Anderson wavered from his belief ,formed close to his return from abroad in the Autumn of 1888 that the murderer emanated from a section of the "low class Polish Jewish Community".The rest followed ;
Kosminski relayed- to Wolff or his sister or Jacob Cohen---or all three as well as the rest of his worried family- the disturbing delusions he had----among them that he thought he was "Jack the Ripper"----as many did ----to the police in particular in 1888 -among those who were mentally unbalanced like that.Today it is more frequently a famous leader such as Napoleon or Catherine the Great or the Pope that the deluded think they are.

So what about Macnaghten?
My view is that Druitt"s relatives or friends may well have become convinced that Druitt was the Ripper----as people would if for example, as I suspect was the case,Druitt himself had told his brother that he thought he was Jack the Ripper----and possibly even confided in his friend and boss Valentine,that he thought he was " The Ripper". Now that sort of information to a very alarmed Valentine, would,I believe,have forced Valentine to convey it to someone-such as Druitt"s brother when he went looking for him at the school.But Valentine would not tell it to those he could not trust,since Druitt was an old friend ----hence the secrecy.

So Jonathan, none of this amounts to either Anderson or Macnaghten being any where near solving the case-or were correct in their conclusions.

As I have said previously,each in their own way wanted the world to know they knew who the Ripper was.But neither were able to provide one single shred of evidence! Do you honestly think Macnaghten would have burnt the evidence?
Does anyone honestly think Anderson with the help of Lawende identified a man who had been eating food in the gutter and had become a shambling wreck by 1891,living in an asylum---all of at least three years after the event-moreover a man Lawende didnt really see properly and didnt think he could identify only days after the murder?

Best
Norma

[Trevor Marriott]

Jonathan,
Just as you have set out the case for using Macnaghten"s words and Anderson"s to try to unravel and then recycle their meaning, I want to explain why neither man impresses me as having a grip on this 122 year old case.
The case of Catherine Mylett [Rose Mylett as she was known by previously] is of some importance in my view.
Stewart Evans, Debra Arif and Rob Clack have each provided in depth, valuable research on this case.
The reason the Mylett case is so valuable in my opinion is because the death of Mylett took place in late December,three weeks after Druitt"s suicide.
Robert Anderson appears to have gone to very great lengths here to try to prove she was not murdered but died of natural causes and therefore could not have been a victim of Jack the Ripper.
This gives me a clue as to how his mind was working after his return from France in October 1888 to oversee the JtR investigation,which up to that point already had between four and six victims depending on whether you accept the murders of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram----remembering too that the Whitechapel Police File was opened with the murder of Emma Smith.
Robert Anderson claims,in his autobiography TLYOMOL, that "house to house " searches had taken place by police "During my absence abroad and that after discussions it was concluded that the murderer was from the Polish Jewish community----because , he asserted,it was well known such people refused to comply with Gentile Justice.[words to that effect as I dont have any of my books to hand to check this out word for word].
On the day of Mary Kelly"s death,Robert Anderson brought Dr Bond with him to Millers Court to provide a second opinion on that of Dr Phillips and the very next day, ie the 10th November 1888, Dr Bond produced his famous "profile" including a report that emphasised among other things that Jack the Ripper had five victims only and ,even though he had not seen any of the injuries of the previous four victims he decided none showed any evidence that the murderer had had anatomical or surgical skills------this flew in the face of both the findings of Dr Phillips and Dr Brown.
Now I know Dr Phillips was in some doubt about whether Catherine Eddowes was killed by the same man as had killed Annie Chapman, because he saw little evidence of surgical skill in the former case whereas in the case of Annie Chapman he had seen what he thought was very clear evidence of it.But Dr Brown,the City of London Police Surgeon disagreed with him.
To summarise then: Dr Bond"s findings on 10th November gave Robert Anderson the information and ammunition he believed he needed , to rule out Emma Smith,Martha Tabram and certainly,he believed the later in December murder of Rose Mylett.because Robert Anderson already believed he knew what kind of homicidal maniac to look for and where to look for him and it wasnt Valentine"s School at Blackheath.
I dont believe Robert Anderson wavered from his belief ,formed close to his return from abroad in the Autumn of 1888 that the murderer emanated from a section of the "low class Polish Jewish Community".The rest followed ;Kosminski talked of disturbing delusions he had----among them that he thought he was "Jack the Ripper"----as many did who were mentally unbalanced like that----just as today it is more frequently a famous leader such as Napoleon or Catherine the Great who deluded people think they are.

So what about Macnaghten?
My view is that his relatives or friends may well have become convinced that Druitt was the Ripper----as people would if for example,as I suspect was the case,Druitt himself had told his brother that he thought he was Jack the Ripper----and possibly even confided in his friend and boss Valentine,that he was The Ripper.Now that sort of information a very alarmed Valentine, would,I believe,have conveyed to someone.But not to those he could not trust,since Druitt was an old friend hence the secrecy.
But Jonathan, that doesnt mean,as you yourself have acknowledged, that either Anderson or Macnaghten were any where near solving the case-or were correct in their conclusions.

As I have said previously,each in their own way wanted the world to know they knew who the Ripper was.But neither were able to provide one single shred of evidence! Do you honestly think Macnaghten would have burnt the evidence?
Does anyone honestly think Anderson with the help of Lawende identified a man who had been eating food in the gutter and had become a shambling wreck by 1891,living in an asylum---all of at least three years after the event-moreover a man Lawende didnt really see properly and didnt think he could identify only days after the murder?

Best
Norma

Norma
i am in total agreement with you

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Trevor!

[Jonathan H]

An excellent post, Norma

I agree to some extent about Anderson.

I don't think he was anti-Semitic, quite the reverse by the standards of his era, but he was convinced early that it must be a low-class [because it was a poor suburb] maniac who lived locally. Somehow Aaron Kosminski came into the frame around 1891, after Sadler fizzled, and he fastened onto that suspect for the rest of his life.

Anderson's crumbling memory, I believe, jumbled Sadler-Grainger, and the witness brought in to 'confront' them, Lawende, with Kosminski's incarceration around the same time.

I don't really agree with you about Macnaghten for reasons I have outlined in previous posts.

You ask if I think he would really have destroyed evidence of the culprit's guilt.

I'd say in flash!

He said he did, but that does not mean anything because I think he was a player of games when it came to the govt., the media and his cronies.

If he had Druitt's confession in his safe -- why keep it?

What good for anybody would that do?

He asks us to take it on his word that he solved the case. He makes not the slightest effort to provide us with a story about that suspect, which even Anderson at least attempts.

I don't think he would want the confession, or whatever it was -- if it existed at all -- to survive as it had no evidential value, as nobody could be charged. Also he would be breaking his own class code, and perhaps a promise to the Druitts never to reveal Montie's identity.

If it was real it was given to him privately and, so far as we know, shown to nobody. He said what he did in 1913 to reassure the surviving Druitts that retirement would not mean exposure -- and it didn't.

Sure, in a hundred years Druitt's name would come out, but in a document addressed to nobody, in which he seems to be such a minor suspect that the police did not even bother to ascertain for sure what he even did for a living.

who would care, one way or the other, in a century anyhow?

Illness perhaps prevented Mac from destroying the Aberconway rewrite. I can find no indication regarding Christabel Aberconway that she was charged by her father to preserve that doumcent at all cost [though I have not read Farson's autobiog.].

She stumbled upon it, misunderstood its purpose, and copied it before it withered away to nothing. Her reserve about revealing Druitt's name to the public, by Dan Farson in 1959, certainly kept alive something of her father's shell-game.

Norma, you mentioned earlier that Mac liked to show copies of the 'Dear boss' letter. All I know is that he showed men pictures of the victims, and in his memoirs he had a go at the un-named Anderson for 'unwisely' releasing that letter as real as it was a journalistic hoax. It is the one detail which Mac, Anderson, Littlechild [who names the reporter] and Sims [right from the start in 1888] were all in agreement on.

[Hunter]

If you check some earlier posts you will see that I and others have debated this line of thinking, for and against.

I personally think that Mac knew everythin and knew what he was doing -- which is an extreme minority position.

I apologize for not making my point clear in my earlier post. I was referring to Mac's original draft, which does give Druitt's name but includes the various inaccuracies mentioned. That the MP may not have realized the political implications, but Mac did, therefore, the reason for him to put a veil over his later corespondence, still does not explain his initial inaccuracies in a confidential document.

That he would have preferred to implicate someone other than "his own kind" is a valid point but still leaves us to wonder what Mac really knew in light of these mistakes. The possible confession is the key, and any details that may lie there. This, in my mind- if it is a Ripper confession- would overshadow any statistical mistakes that Mac had made. Otherwise, we still just have several officials offering different conclusions as to who the Ripper was.

[Septic Blue]

When the killer wrote the graffitti he was cursing those specific three Jews for forcing him to kill again on the same night. In his memoirs Mac writes that this was 'the only clue' left behind by the murderer. I doubt he actually believed this.

"I doubt he actually believed this."

Why?

While the balance of probabilities may render such a scenario 'unlikely'; I would, … and do, consider it quite 'reasonable'.

I should emphasize that this is all nothing more than a gut-feeling; but I envisage Stride's murderer having been disturbed in Dutfield's Yard, and having thus been enraged and obsessively compelled to do something, which he psychotically considered to be immoral: Kill twice during the same excursion. Having done just that; he more-or-less blamed the "Juwes" for Eddowes's death, and 'voiced' his feelings accordingly.

I should emphasize again, that this is merely a gut-feeling.

[Jonathan H]

To Hunter

If you mean the 'Aberconway' version as the original draft full of mistakes this is where we part company.

I theorise that this is the second version, created in 1898 to show Major Griffiths and then George Sims. It was written to impress writers he could trust and manipulate, and for no other reason. It is not an official police document.

Mac could not possibly show them the real, authentic copy because in that version Druitt is a minor suspect, about whom the police were unsure of what he even did for a living.

Nevertheless the official 1894 version is the one with less mistakes; Mac is not saying he was definitely a medical man, does not say he was 41, does not say he killed himself hours after the Kelly murder, and gives the correct date for when his body was fished from the Thames.

In the second version, the so-called 'draft', Mac made Druitt definitely a middle-aged doctor who seems to have lived with family at Blackheath, and whose body was fished from the Thames on Dec 3rd 1888.

This latter detail did not fool the Major who seems to have simply added up the seven weeks and worked out that the body must have been recovered on Dec 31st -- which is correct.

Yet Mac got what he wanted in terms of convincing his crony to alter 'family' into 'friends', presumably to avoid libel trouble. The adding of the train ticket was to locate the 'doctor' as living at Blackheath to deflect away from the fact that this is really a young barrister with chambers within walking distance of the East End.

That train pass is for me the giveaway that Mac had accurate details about Druitt at his fingertips. What he could not recall that he was not a physician but remembered accurately this tiny detail about what was found on his body?

I don't buy that.

I think Mac had a wealth of material on Druitt, including PC Moulson's Report, the coroner's report, his confession, what the MP told him, all of which we only glimpse in contradictory documents Mac never wanted us to study at all. His memoirs were meant to be his only public testament on the case, it just did not work out that way.

[Jonathan H]

To Septic Blue

Yes, we agree on the Graffitti then - don't we?

[Hunter]

Hi Jonathan,

Your last post clarifies your train of of thought most clearly. And, I now have a better understanding as to where you are coming from. I know how difficult it can be to outline a theoretical promulgation of events in bits and pieces on various posts that are inudated with rebuttal as well. All that I can say is that this is very intriquing and worthy of serious consideration, whether one initially agrees or not. I admire your willingness to accept our rebuttals while remaining focused on the point you are attempting to convey.

[Natalie Severn]

Jonathan,
I see your theory a bit better now. But I must say I dont see Macnaghten as nearly so complex a person as you present him.Yes,he did produce the 1894 report ,a prepared set of information to deflect from the Sun"s articles about Thomas Cutbush, the "nephew" of Superintendent Charles Cutbush ,being the Ripper.This was in the same month ,the previous week,in February 1894 in case required-and as a safeguard.
But beyond that there doesnt seem much to distinguish him . Up to 1889 he had worked as a tea planter in Bengal.Nothing too eventful.I dont see him as a plotter but as a loyal friend to James Monro who invited him to take the post of assistant chief constable in the first place and who would be his lead confidant in Whitehall when Monro retired to Aberdeen.
But the stories about his collection are intriguing in the sense that they reveal a bit of a twinkle in his eye and this gives the lie to me that Macnaghten would have not been shy to come forward,had he really known the identity of Jack the Ripper.What kudos----had he actually been able to turn round to Major Smith and say,"Aha! you might have been able to scotch Anderson"s claim to fame over JtR,but you cant do so over my claim......look I have the proof!And the world would have sat up and listened.Nothing would have given Mac more pleasure to have been known as the cop who told the world who the ripper really was.
No,he didnt have real evidence,the rock solid evidence Jonathan.Nobody did ----moreover he never actually claimed to have it---just some "private information"----it was probably stuff about Monty telling his startled brother that he was Jack the Ripper and not Napoleon.
Still its worth your effort.You never know something may turn up to show you were right!
All the Very Best
Norma

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Hunter for your positive words.

I have found all the rebuttal here to be fair and polite.

When I realized that the Backert story -- really the Dutton story, really the McCormick fiction, published by Cullen -- that the police knew that Druitt was the fiend when they fished him out of the Thames was a lie i began to look at the case differently.

Most people give up on Druitt at that point, fair enough, but I was more intrigued.

Because Sims, from Mac, was saying exactly that in the Edwardian era that the 'doctor' was on the run from the Bobbies -- which is where McCormick got the idea for his lie -- and yet Mac in his memoirs refutes that Druitt was a contemporaneous suspect?

I theorized that the Ripper mystery might be very different from what we think.

That the fiend's identity became known only later and this embarrassment was to be concealed at all cost, until Mac was safely retired.

[Jonathan H]

To Norma,

Yes, I am proposing a new Melville Leslie Macnaghten, based on my revisionist take on the available sources.

The enormous focus on Anderson, whilst understandable -- and did lead to the sublime 'Sailors Home' theory by Evans and Rumbelow in 'Scotland Yard Investigates' -- has obscured the political and media agendas of this enigmatic smoothie.

On the weekend I will give you examples of his artful decpetion which are nor Ripper-related but go to his character and m.o.

In this revisionist theory the memoir chapter 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' is the Rosetta Stone of the whole Ripper mystery -- and yet it does not appear in Evans and Rumbelow's great book, or the 'Ultimate Source Companion' [due to oversight], and is given extremely limited attention everywhere else. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen anybody mention the revealing and evocative chapter title, let alone analyse it?! Apologies if memory is now failing me...

[Natalie Severn]

This sounds good Jonathan! Looking forward to reading it when you post!
Best
Norma