J. McDermott

[packers stem]

excellent work Chris.
A 'political hot potato' one might say

[lynn cates]

congratulations

Hello Chris. Congratulations. You do excellent work!

"I too am surprised that this puzzle hasn't received more attention. One might have imagined it would be a conspiracy-theorist's dream."

Or, if not a conspiracy theorist, at least one who questions the dogma. But then again, dozens of other possibilities are out there waiting to be challenged. And each potentially overturning the dogma.

Cheers.
LC

[Phil Carter]

Hello Mike, Chris, John,

It is, as they say, early days...who knows what will come to light? Chris has done some marvellous work on this (as per usual it must be said).

Chris, I too will be going through the A-Z sometime next week to see what comes to my notice too. The more the merrier, as it must be a nightmare to try and cover all of this subject in one volume.

best wishes

Phil

[Chris]

Thanks to John and Mike for their comments.

I too am surprised that this puzzle hasn't received more attention. One might have imagined it would be a conspiracy-theorist's dream.

Regarding John's suggestion, it's very flattering, but I have no ambition to become a print author, though I hope to continue contributing to Casebook's own 'A-Z' as time permits:
http://wiki.casebook.org/

[mklhawley]

Excellent work -as usual Chris,

You produce excellent and most accurate work. Congratulations!

I have a suggestion for you.

Why don't you approach the editorial committee of "The A to Z of Jack the Ripper"? And see if they would like to include you in their team for the next edition?

Now I am not being sarcastic about the current editors here.

Needless to say, that publication - a daunting challenge for anyone- attracts very few bouquets, but countless brickbats.

Good work anyway Chris. I could not find anything about Red McDermott in the Butterworth book, where one might expect to see a mention.

JOHN RUFFELS.

Hi John,

I have to second you on the outstanding research by Chris. I am actually surprised more people are not interested in Red McDermott possibly being a JTR suspect, especially because of his Scotland Yard/Fenian connections. Because of the research by Chris, I am pretty confident this Johnson character who drew this most likely received his information AFTER he came over to the U.S. as opposed to when he lived in London. I'm bummed, though. Just think of the conspiracy theories popping up because of having a Scotland Yard secret agent implicated as JTR!

Awesome work Chris, and I will let you know if Johnson's descendents come up with anything. I'm sure it's the Rochester thing, since they live only an hour away from there.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Johnr]

Champion Work Chris!

Excellent work -as usual Chris,

You produce excellent and most accurate work. Congratulations!

I have a suggestion for you.

Why don't you approach the editorial committee of "The A to Z of Jack the Ripper"? And see if they would like to include you in their team for the next edition?

Now I am not being sarcastic about the current editors here.

Needless to say, that publication - a daunting challenge for anyone- attracts very few bouquets, but countless brickbats.

Good work anyway Chris. I could not find anything about Red McDermott in the Butterworth book, where one might expect to see a mention.

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Chris]

Mike kindly provided me with some more information about the contents of the drawing book. In particular, it includes a drawing of a "Johnson Interlocking Machine", which Mike identified as a piece of equipment manufactured by the Johnson Railroad Signal Company, founded by members of a Johnson family who had originated in England. A bit more research into the genealogy of this family revealed a likely candidate for the Fred Johnson to whom the drawing book belonged.

The founders of the company were descendants of Joseph Johnson (b. c. 1809) and his wife Ellen (b. c. 1811), who were both born in Alconbury, Huntingdonshire. Joseph was a carpenter or builder (employing 8 men in 1851), and the couple had at least eight children, the older of whom were born at Alconbury, and the younger (from c. 1843) at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire.

The Johnson Railroad Signal Company was founded in 1888 in Rahway, New Jersey, by Charles Roberts Johnson (?1852-1893), the son of Joseph's eldest son William, and Henry Johnson (?1837-1910), Joseph's fourth son. Charles had originally gone to the USA in 1881 (see his obituary in Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. 20 (1894), available online at http://www.archive.org/details/proceedings9420amer), and his uncle Henry followed in 1886 (New York Times, 8 April 1910).

Joseph Johnson's third son, John (b. c. 1837), was also a railway signal engineer. In 1865 at Southwark he married Susan Odell, and among their nine children was a son, Fred Stewart Johnson, whose birth was registered at Doncaster, Yorkshire, in the first quarter of 1870 (a later census record gives the month of his birth as December 1868, presumably an error for 1869; an elder brother, Harry Odell Johnson, had his birth registered in the last quarter of 1858).

Fred's father, John Johnson, was living at York at the date of the 1881 census, but that is the last record I have found of him. On 19 December 1887 Fred S. Johnson, aged 18, a whitesmith from York, arrived in New York on the Umbria. The following June, Mrs S. Johnson, accompanied by three other children, arrived in New York on the Alaska. Presumably her husband had either died or preceded the rest of the family. But by 1900, Susan was certainly a widow. At that date she was living in Newark, New Jersey, with three of her children, including Frederick S., who like his brother was a Signal Man Steam R[ail]R[oad].

Around 1905 Fred married Alida, who had been born in New York of German parents. I haven't found the couple in the 1910 census, but in 1920 and 1930 they were living at Mifflin, Juniata county, Pennsylvania, with Fred working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Alida died in 1974 at Mifflintown, Juniata county.

This is the only Fred/Frederick Johnson I've been able to find in the immediate family of the founders of the Johnson Railroad Signal Company, though it should be mentioned that we haven't yet managed to clarify the relationship with Mike's friend's family. If this is the right man, the most important conclusions are probably that he was living in the USA, not in England, at the time of the Ripper murders, and that there is no indication that he is likely to have picked up private information from police circles. So the likeliest source of the "supposition" that McDermott was the Ripper was probably the American press, which still leaves us guessing why no trace of such a sensational story can be found today...

[mklhawley]

Nice job Chris and I agree with you. I'ts also intriguing that it connects a fenian character with JTR, yet I have not seen Red McDermott being connected before. This is what ripperology is all about.

Sincerely,

Mike

[lynn cates]

blotchy face

Hello Chris and Mike. Lovely find. It sounds like he had a carroty moustache. Now, if we could verify the blotchy face . . .

Cheers.
LC

[Chris]

I finally managed to find a picture of "Red" Jim McDermott. It's from the Irish World of 18 October 1890 (available through www.genealogybank.com).

This looks to me very much like the man in Mike's drawing.

[mklhawley]

This is awesome Chris, and very appropriate for this thread! Here is what I found in the New York Times, May 20, 1884:

WHERE IS JIM M’DERMOTT?
The following extract is made from a letter dated Rome, Italy, May2, and was written by a gentleman to whom McDrmott is perfectly well known:

“Last Saturday, going from Marseilles to Nice, while on the train I went …Jim McDermott. He was neatly dressed. Had on a drab overcoat, black silk hat. With crape on it, and wore black gloves. His mustache was dyed black, but not sufficiently so to hide the red. I knew him, and he knew me. There was no mistaking his bluish grey eyes and double chin…”

It's not a picture of him, but the description seems to agree.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Chris]

Greetings all,


Something interesting happened last Christmas. It may be nothing or it could be something significant. A friend of mine knew I was involved in JTR stuff, so he contacted me and told me a family story.

He has an old chest that has been passed on through the family, which belonged to an artist/family member named Fred Johnson who lived in London in the 1880’s. In the chest was a pad of paper called, “Fred Johnson’s drawing book”. One of the pictures is of a man with a receding hairline and a mustache dressed in a Victorian age suit. Above the drawing it says, “W. J. McDermott the supposed Jack the Ripper”. Eric said Johnson lived in London at the time of the murders. I checked Casebook and Google and I cannot find any reference to a McDermott as a possible JTR suspect. I also asked Simon Wood and Wolf Vanderlinden last January/February and they had not heard of him. Have any of you ever heard of a suspect named W. McDermott? My thoughts are that Johnson merely saw this in a local London newspaper, so he drew it (of course, no photocopying then). It's just strange that this man has been forgotten.

My friend took photos of the chest, the drawing book, a picture of a man in a top hat next to a woman, and then the picture of this McDermott. It looks like a West End man who may have been suspected of having a second life frequenting the East End. Below is a photo of Johnson's drawing.

Sincerely,

Mike

Just one observation: I'm pretty sure that says "Mr J. McDermott", not "W. J. McDermott."

And only one near-contemporary "J. McDermott" springs to mind - "Red" Jim McDermott, the British agent in Fenian circles. There's nothing I know of to support this identification, but it would be fascinating if this were the "J. McDermott" referred to. Unfortunately I can't find a picture of "Red" Jim, but I wouldn't be surprised if one could be tracked down, and that ought to determine whether he's the right man.