Criteria for plausibility

[TomTomKent]

Not quite sure how to ask this with out being too vague, but if you were to establish general bullet point rules for your own personal opinions on what makes a suspect viable, or even remotely plausible what would they be?

My own, which are far from perfect would be:
1) to fit reasonably with established evidence.
2) to be "known and shown" to have been in the area for the period.
3) to have evidence connecting them to the case or reasonable cause to believe evidence may be found with continued research.
4) said evidence passes the Winnie the Pooh and Queen Victoria tests. Ie, if the case isbuilt upon vague assertions that Celebrity X might not be where established history places them, or isbased upon cyphers in a painting , novel, poem or play it must be shown these can be substantiated and can not be applied equally well to my benchmark celebrity and text. This has never been passed.
5) is there a reason to suspect the person was Jack, above anybody else?


Mine are lame.. what are yours?

[miss marple]

We need that, it might concentrate minds on the probable rather than the impossible.People waste hours on totally absurd famous candidates rather than on the probability of of mr average.

Miss Marple

[Tom_Wescott]

I say he must have one of the following - 1) Contemporary suspicion against him, or 2) Something that occurred in his subsequent history (after 1888) that would force us to look at him, such as implication in similar crimes. If neither is going for him, then I'm hard pressed to see how he could be called suspect.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Scott Nelson]

3) He was, well, try Henry Defries. The case solution could be all your's. Hey, who said that before?

[curious]

Not quite sure how to ask this with out being too vague, but if you were to establish general bullet point rules for your own personal opinions on what makes a suspect viable, or even remotely plausible what would they be?

My own, which are far from perfect would be:
1) to fit reasonably with established evidence.
2) to be "known and shown" to have been in the area for the period.
3) to have evidence connecting them to the case or reasonable cause to believe evidence may be found with continued research.
4) said evidence passes the Winnie the Pooh and Queen Victoria tests. Ie, if the case isbuilt upon vague assertions that Celebrity X might not be where established history places them, or isbased upon cyphers in a painting , novel, poem or play it must be shown these can be substantiated and can not be applied equally well to my benchmark celebrity and text. This has never been passed.
5) is there a reason to suspect the person was Jack, above anybody else?


Mine are lame.. what are yours?

I say he must have one of the following - 1) Contemporary suspicion against him, or 2) Something that occurred in his subsequent history (after 1888) that would force us to look at him, such as implication in similar crimes. If neither is going for him, then I'm hard pressed to see how he could be called suspect.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi, TomTom and Tom,

Never really thought about it specifically. I'd guess my telling you "it's a feeling I get . . . " would not be reassuring.

TomTom, your 1 would work, except there is almost nothing that is universally agreed upon as being evidence.

But it certainly works for me and what I see as "the facts"

Your 2 makes sense. But that leaves out William Henry Bury who lived nearby and had a pony and cart which could certainly put him in Whitechapel. He was my first favorite but does not seem so compelling now.

3 -- It is my understanding that there is no "evidence" that ties anyone to the case, so I'm not clear on what you would fit in here.

Perhaps, if you have suspects, you can use an example here.

4. absolutely!

5. A reason to suspect the person was Jack? even if not above all others. Yes. I'd say family suspecting would be a good start. Or Tom's number one reason, being a suspect at the time of the investigation.

However, I think it is possible the killer was never suspected by the police.


So, Tom, I am glad you made your two reasons OR 2) Something that occurred in his subsequent history (after 1888) that would force us to look at him, such as implication in similar crimes.

or if not crimes, being institutionalized for a mental "breakdown" or committing suicide.

Despite Dennis Rader, I doubt that the killer responsible for the murders in Whitechapel just stopped forever, unless some stressor is found that ceased in the killer's life.

He could have become ill, died, or been institutionalized.

For me, it is never just one thing, but a stack of incidents, or characteristics that lead me to think this MIGHT be the right person. And I suspect that "stack" is what you are referring to in your first reason, isn't it TomTom? Fitting the evidence fairly well.

So, it's not really "feel" for me. It is how everything meshes together, like a tapestry or jigsaw puzzle, when a complete picture is forming and things make sense.

I look for patterns and clarity. Pretty vague too, I guess.

curious

[Simon Wood]

Hi TomTomKent,

Here are my bullet points -

• 1) [what evidence?]
• 2) [that's a lotta people.]
• 3) [what particular evidence might that be?]
• 4) [and nor will it ever be.]
• 5) [No.]

Regards,

Simon

[Tel]

Yo Tom, why '1) Contemporary suspicion against him, '?

Surely the chances of him never coming under suspicion are just as great, or greater, than the alternative.

I still think he was a Mr Nobody, certainly not one of the frequent celebs that are put forward.

[The Good Michael]

Sorry, but all this criteria is refutable.

Mike

[Jonathan H]

What Mystery?

To TomTomKent

Another way of approaching it is that the notion that the 'Jack the Ripper' case was not solved to some contemporaneous police's (or to a policeman's) satisfaction is a creation of secondary sources.

That it is almost entirely a modern conceit with little historical merit.

Specifically this false notion gained traction in the popular mind with William Le Queux who, in 1923, rebooted the Ripper as a mystery which had confounded all police, but which he, Le Queux, a lucrative, right-wing fantasist-alarmist, had of course solved (when arguably he had done no such thing).

Therefore, this notion of an unsolved mystery is mistaken, according to critical primary sources by one, or more, significant police figures.

That what you have here is an historical subject in which, overall, secondary and modern sources have smothered, quite unconvcingly, the primary material written by the cops who were there and that some of the top cops claimed that Jack's identity was firmly established -- as far as you could against a suspect who could never receive due process.

How could this be so?

For example, the 'West off England' MP article and the memoirs of Sir Melville Macnaghten do not appear -- at all -- in 'Scotland Yard Investigates', or 'The Ultimate JTR Source Companion'. And there are many which include one but not the other, or neither.

That is how often excellent secondary sources, once a paradigm takes hold, can be also literary monuments to unconscious and entrenched bias, while honestly professing not to be.

The writings of George Sims, in his heyday very famous and influential -- and a Mac source-by-proxy -- gets very little attention in most secondary sources (nor do Mac's 1913's comments upon retirement).

This inherent and modern bias against Macnaghten (and Druitt) deforms most secondary accounts because only by leaving out these sources you can make a seemingly plausible case that only Sir Robert Anderson made such definitive claims as to having identified the Whitechapel fiend.

Once you dismiss the egocentric, error-riddled Anderson as unreliable -- its hardly difficult -- you can maintian the rebooting of the mystery, as an unsolved mystery, on the weak premise that no other police chief was so certain and pushy with his suspect choice, arguably a position based on sand for it rests on omission; on ignoring those critical sources mentioned above.

[Stephen Thomas]

Once you dismiss the egocentric, error-riddled Anderson as unreliable ....

As opposed to the non-egocentric and non-error riddled memorandum?

[lynn cates]

shouted down

Hello Jonathan. Do you think it possible that part of the "unsolved" aspect of the case came about from the fact that both Anderson and MacNaughten's theories were "shouted down" by other coppers?

Cheers.
LC

[Jonathan H]

To Stephen Thomas

The Macnaghen Report(s) were arguably composed for separate audiences, and for separate agendas.

The version disseminated -- anonymously -- to the public, and which artfully hides Druitt, Kosminski and Ostrog, also hid that the English 'doctor' was an entirely posthumous suspect, something which Mac conceded in his 1914 memoirs.

Which reminds me that often today's secondary sources do not bother to even mention that there are non-identical versions of this source, let alone try and figure out why?

And thus modern econdary sources spin ever further away from the primary sources, and the likely historical truth.

In the other version -- for the official archive -- Mac silkily made the point that Druitt might have been a doctor and then again he might not have been -- and he wasn't.

Mac's 1914 memoirs dump Ostrog -- as we do -- and dump the Polish Jew and the dump the American medico suspects (Sims, 1907) and dump that the Ripper was an affluent, invalid recluse who had been sectioned. They concede that he was not a police suspect between 1888 to 1891, and that he was long deceased anyhow. They also concede that this 'Protean' maniac had a diseased mind and [probably] body, and that he did not kill himself mere hours after the 'awful glut' of Miller's Ct. -- and Druitt didn't.

What I can never get through to certain people is that Macnaghten debunked key elements of his own Report(s) bringing the 'de-facto' third version, 'Laying the Ghost ...', into alignment with facts we know now are correct. The other versions, which we could not access until 1959 and 2012 (unofficial) and 1966 and 1975 (official) have been both indispensable and redundant since the eve of the First World War.

To Lynn

Yes it's possible.

But much more likely, based on what little we have, is that they knew nothing about Druitt, and next to nothing accurate about [Aaron] 'Kosminski' except what they had been hustled by Mac (the latter knew, unlike Anderson and/or Swanson that the Polish Jew was alive, not dead 'soon after', and that he was not sectioned until a long time after Kelly, not 'on the prowl' for 'mere weeks').

Arguably, hands-on Macnaghten knew all about all the suspects, and he had no doubts about one of them.

[lynn cates]

solution

Hello Jonathan. Thanks. Of course, such lack of knowledge as you suggest likely enhanced the "unsolved case" point of view.

You are suggesting that it was solved, but not by the Met--only Mac--and after a few years, if I understand properly.

Cheers.
LC

[Jonathan H]

Yes, though he had the entire Force take credit for supposedly nearly catching the 'drowned doctor' between 1898 and 1913, until, as retirement loomed, he asserted his more dominant role, eg. the knowledge of his identity 'came to me subsequently' and 'I have destroyed' all the relevant papers -- the secret exits with him.

Until then it was not known, eg. by Abberline and Littlechild, that Mac had anything much to do with the Ripper case at all eg. his [posthumous] investigation of Druitt in 1891, when 'certain facts' led to a 'conclusion' about the 'remarkable' and 'fascinating' multi-faceted ('Protean') Druitt.

[bolo]

Hi Jonathan and Lynn,

for me, what Anderson and Littlechild (and Mac) wrote about the Ripper has a certain ring to it. I can't help but thinking they were blowing things out of proportion in order to save face in front of their respective audiences.

Specially Anderson must have had a huge problem with a prominent unsolved case such as the Ripper murders that fell under his authority so he gradually built up some sort of legend that was not a complete fabrication but stretched the truth a little too much.

In other words, from what I've read about their suspects, their lives and personalities, I do not put much weight in their Ostrogs, Druitts or Tumbletys. They seem like dead ends to me, even though I try to keep an open mind about it, who knows what further research will bring.

I apologize in advance for these probably incredibly noob-ish comments.

Regards,

Boris