where do you stand?

[Jonathan H]

Because no such elaboration is needed, and obscures what is a straight-through line between the primary sources of 1889, 1891 and 1914.

Macnaghten refers to the family believing in Montague's guilt because he was, definitely, 'sexually insane': eg. he obtained sexual fulfillment from violence.

In 2008, the politician of the 'West of England' MP story was indentified as Tory MP, Henry Farquharson, a near-neighbour of the original Druitt homestead (Vicar Charles Druitt, Montie's cousin, was still in the region). The Druitts were also Tories. The M.P. was a mmeber of the Olb Boy Network -- in tbis case the Etonian wing -- like Melville Macnaghten.

Identifying the MP proved that a likely bridge could now be found between Mac's report(s) of 1894 and the 1889 reports of Druitt's inexplicable suicide.

This shattered an earlier theory that Mac perhaps had mixed up Druitt with other suspects, as he seemed to know so little about him that was accurate.

That Druitt being a Ripper susoect, at all, begins with Macnaghten in the extant record.

In fact, belief -- rightly or wrongly -- in Montie's culpability emerged, as Macnaghten had written for file, among his family as the 1891 source arguably establishes. Mac had confirmed this, albeit more obliquely, in his memoirs too.

The notion that the police knew at the time of Druitt's death that he was the Ripper and that Kelly was the final victim, is a lie that Mac foisted on the public via Griffiths and Sims. The real investigation included 'Ripper' murders after Kelly (Coles was originally the final victim).

In his own memoirs Macnaghten admitted that it was not until 'some years after' (the MP story is from early 1891) that the likely real fiend, long dead, came to 'police' attention, though all other surviving sources strongly suggest that this was known only to Mac at Scotland Yard.

[Wickerman]

Thanks, Jon. Much appreciated.

I'm afraid I left the "toff" camp years back.

Hi Phil.
Yes, I've been around Ripperology since before Knight came on the scene, so I do know what you mean about 'waves' among authors.

The important point to keep in mind, there are "Toffs" and there are "well-dressed" men, the two are not the same in my book. Was Dr. Neil Cream a "Toff" in your book?, he was a murderer, and a murderer of prostitutes, not all murderer's are gutter snipe's dressed in rags and tatters.

I tend to think this image of a low-life dosser committing the crimes is one of denial, along the lines of modern day snobbery. Only someone out of work, rough, no class, no morals, and belonging to the criminal classes could commit a crime like this - which I take to be classic melodrama. Its like believing all the criminals must look evil - which we both know to be rubbish.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

A fiend-murderer could be a respectable, normal-seeming person who is 'above suspicion', which is as true today as it was then.

Nice to see you back Jonathan, and of course, you are spot on in this observation.

Regards, Jon S.

[mklhawley]

In his own memoirs Macnaghten admitted that it was not until 'some years after' (the MP story is from early 1891) that the likely real fiend, long dead, came to 'police' attention, though all other surviving sources strongly suggest that this was known only to Mac at Scotland Yard.

So, Sims was around during the 1888 murders, yet considered Macnaghten a credible source even though Macnaghten began just after. Am I correct?

Mike

[Jonathan H]

'Home Office Report'?

Dear Mike

That's an excellent question.

What did Sims know, and when did he stop knowing it?

Actually Macnaghten was around too for the murders, as in he was in London cooling his heels after his appointment was blocked earlier that year (plus his father was dying). Mac was more 'there' for the murders than Anderson who was, to some extent, abroad due to the need to recover his health.

Here is Sims, as Dagonet, in 'The Referee' of Sept 9th, 1888, giving the cops a hard time:

'The police up to the moment of writing are still at sea as to the series of Whitechapel murders - a series with such a strong family likeness as to point conclusively to one assassin or firm of assassins. The detective force is singularly lacking in the smartness and variety of resource which the most ordinary detective displays in the shilling shocker. As a rule, your modern detective waits for "information," instead of making a clue for himself by joining together the links of circumstantial evidence.'

And here he is in 1899 praising their herculean efforts:

' ... Jack, when he committed that crime [Kelly] was in the last stage of the peculiar mania from which he suffered. He had become grotesque in his ideas as well as bloodthirsty. Almost immediately after this murder he drowned himself in the Thames. his name is perfectly well known to the police. If he hadn't committed suicide he would have been arrested.'

And again generously praising the police on July 3rd 1902:

' ... the same process of exhaustion which enabled them at last to know the real name and address of Jack the Ripper.

In that case they had reduced the only possible Jacks to seven, then by a further exhaustive inquiry to three, and were about to fit these three people's movements in with the dates of the various murders when the one and only genuine Jack saved further trouble by being found drowned in the Thames, into which he had flung himself, a raving lunatic, after the last and most appalling mutilation of the whole series.

But prior to this discovery the name of the man found drowned was bracketed with two others as

A Possible Jack

and the police were in search of him alive when they found him dead.'


So, not only did Macnaghten -- who as you say was not there on the Froce for the first seven or so murders -- manage to convince Sims that the police had identified the fiend (as much as you could be certain with a posthumous suspect) but that this had happened in 1888, before the mad doctor flung himself into the Thames.

One possibility is that Mac and Tatcho were in this ruse together.

It's just that Druitt's name, but not his real profession, leaks to a minor writer, Frank Richardson and his 'Dr. Bluitt'.

If that is from a loose-lipped Sims then he was nearly blowing the whole deal.

But not if he believed in his 'drowned doctor' as that figure had no family of his own to offend, and his pals already knew and he had not had any patients for years -- so what's the harm in telling Frank the real name?

The other possibility is that sometime in 1898, or early 1899, Mac misled Tatcho with a whopper of a fib: he told him that prior to his coming onto the Force the Ripper's identity was established in 1888 and then with-held because the man was deceased.

The 'Aberconway' version, perhaps read to Sims, would have smothered the disappointing events of 1891 by claiming that they were after Sadler so hard because 'they' knew he was the murderer of Coles, not because of 'Jack' whom they knew was deceased (the prime suspect of Anderson-Swanson is also dead and also seemingly 'soon after' Kelly).

Although Mac was not on the Froce he was such a big time Whitehall player, he could have assured Sims, that he and not Anderson was asked to prepare the definitive 'Report' which was now snugly archived in the 'Home Office' proving it was Dr. Druitt.

This is a feature of Sims' account in the Edwardian Era which he propounds as so authoritative that he dismisses Abberline's dismissal over the drowned suspect with beath-taking arrogance (ironically Abberline, who probably knew nothing about Montie, conceded there had been a Home Office Report but was arguably mistaking Sims' Jack for the missing 'medical student' John Sanders).

Mac may not have been there in 1888 but he wrote up the 'Home Office Report' which every Home Sec. has consulted since as the last word on that non-mystery.

The 'Aberconway' version was shamelessly hustled to Sims as a completely accurate copy, in which the trio are enhanced for a popular writer on true crime:

March 29th, 1903 -- 1st salvo against Abberline:

"Jack the Ripper" committed suicide after his last murder - a murder so maniacal that it was accepted at once as the deed of a furious madman. It is perfectly well know at Scotland Yard who "Jack" was, and the reasons for the police conclusions were given in the report to the Home Office, which was considered by the authorities to be final and conclusive.

How the ex-Inspector can say "We never believed 'Jack' was dead or a lunatic" in face of the report made by the Commissioner of Police is a mystery to me.'


Note that Sims comes perilously close to making it clear that Macnaghten, by then Assistant Commissioner, is the author of the 'Home Office Report'.

Which again makes me feel Tatcho was not in on Mac's game.

April 5th 1903 -- 2nd salvo against the pesky Abberline for daring to contradict the great writer and his unimpeachable sources:

'It is argued that "Jack" could not have drowned himself in 1888, because there were murders in Whitechapel in 1891. The last of the Ripper series was the Miller's-court horror, which occurred on November 9, 1888. The East End murders of later years were not in the same 'handwriting.

... A little more than a month later the body of the man suspected by the chiefs at the Yard, and by his own friends, who were in communication with the Yard, was found in the Thames. The body had been in the water about a month.

I am betraying no confidence in making this statement, because it has been published by an official who had an opportunity of seeing the Home Office Report, Major Arthur Griffiths, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of prisons.

... I have no time to argue with the gentlemen, some of them ex-officers of the detective force, who want to make out that the report to the Home Office was incorrect ...'

At his 1913 retirement press coneference, Macnaghten still claims primacy over the real Jack, but now it is a 'secret' among 'other secrets' which come to him, and are owned by him and thus he can destroy his files on it without batting an eye -- they are not official after all.

[Phil H]

Jon

I tend to think this image of a low-life dosser committing the crimes is one of denial, along the lines of modern day snobbery. Only someone out of work, rough, no class, no morals, and belonging to the criminal classes could commit a crime like this - which I take to be classic melodrama. Its like believing all the criminals must look evil - which we both know to be rubbish.

On the contrary - the image of the "toff" was surely the imposition? The reversion to looking for a local man, I believe, reflected not only a deeper study of what Anderson had written, and of the marginalia when they emerged, but also a cultural shift that said ordinary people can be interesting, that you don't need a name or money to be "famous" ( or should that be notorious?) and that serious books did not need hyping by the idea of someone "respectable" or clever slumming.

I would point out that the VAST majority of the suspects questioned or considered by the police in the period were working class, usually immigrants - these seem to have been the people suspected by the locals too. Of MM's three suspects, TWO (Ostrog and Kosminski) are from the poorer classes.

Druitt and Littlechild's Tumblety seem to be exceptions.

With that I'll close - otherwise people will think I'm trying to copy Jonathan's mile length efforts. Sorry, but without more to support it, it is the middle-class johnny and the toff that are yesterday's man. I'm with the people!!!

Phil

[Fisherman]

In all honesty, we know that the police searched the asylums, and that Anderson confidently stated that the deeds could not be those of a sane man, but must have been perpetrated by a maniac.

They knew much less than we do about the everyday, grey serialist.

The best,
Fisherman

[Phil H]

But they were THERE, Fisherman. We are not.

That must count for something.

Modern arrogance might be based on something, but believing we have all the answers is a dangerous assumption, IMHO.

Phil

[Fisherman]

But they were THERE, Fisherman. We are not.

That must count for something.

Modern arrogance might be based on something, but believing we have all the answers is a dangerous assumption, IMHO.

Phil

I m not sure where the "arrogance" entered the discussion, Phil? What I am saying is that the police worked from the assumption that the killer would very probably be a maniac BEFORE they had any true leads, and that this assumption is demonstrably wrong, going by what we know of serialists today.
Otherwise, I have frequently pointed out that the police knew a lot more about the case in detail than we do - but that really is not the issue here.

The best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

I m not sure where the "arrogance" entered the discussion, Phil? What I am saying is that the police worked from the assumption that the killer would very probably be a maniac BEFORE they had any true leads, and that this assumption is demonstrably wrong, going by what we know of serialists today.
Otherwise, I have frequently pointed out that the police knew a lot more about the case in detail than we do - but that really is not the issue here.

The best,
Fisherman

What I am saying is that the police worked from the assumption that the killer would very probably be a maniac BEFORE they had any true leads...

Did they Christer? What is this assumption based on?

Last nighy I had a very interesting telephone conversation on this very subject of the arrogance of the modern researcher with an excellent researcher in the field. Our opinions supported each others in term that the Police of the day were in a far better position to pass judegement on suspects that any modern researcher when considered at that particular moment in time.

Hindsight is great, however not completely reliable.

Monty

[Jonathan H]

After 1973 and TV's 'Jack the Ripper' the case began to split onto divergent paths.

To the general public, and parasitic pop culture, it was something to do with Royalty, or a Royal-state cover-up.

Whereas for serious researchers it was more likely to be one of the police suspects.

Don Rumbelow, a fine writer, brought out 'The Complete Jack the Ripper' in 1975 and it published, for the first time, the official version of Mac's memo in its entirety.

But the implications of Mac writing that Druitt might not be a doctor but was definitely sexually insane was arguably missed by Odell and then by Rumbelow.

Worse no bridging source between Druitt's death and his emergence on an internal list of suspects could be found, and so Rumbelow tried four possible bridges, all of which are untenable as they violently clash with other primary sources: eg. the McCormick-Dutton-Backert hoax and the Stephen White hoax among them.

With Sims, and the implications of Sims lying mostly dormant, the MP article totally buried and unknown and the Mac memoirs sidelined, the theory of a forgetful, unreliable Mac had become the entrenched wisdom (later Druitt would be recast as a tragic homosexual, his suicide totally disconnected, even as a possibility, from the Whitechapel crimes)

It is no wonder that diligent researchers, with the Royal Watergate saturating culture like a thin film of vomit, also felt that the drowned not-a-doctor was a dead end, and thus moved across to rehabilitate Macnaghten's loathed rival, Sir Robert Anderson.

Martin Fido's ground-breaking discovery was not just that he found Aaron Kosminski but that he did not find him where he was supposed to be: sectioned in March 1889 (according to Mac's Report(s), and insistently implied by Anderson's various bits and pieces after 1895, and by the Swanson Marginalia

This was one of the reasons Fido rejected the real Aaron Kosminski as Anderson's (and Swanson's) Polish Jew suspect: because it was way too long a gap between Kelly's murder and the suspect being 'safely caged' (which had hardly 'cut short' his reign). You would never know that from Anderson's comments and writings that the gap was over two years.

Hence David Cohen seemed more likely, to Fido, because he fit Anderson's timeline, and was demonstrably violent to the point of a public danger.

The focus on the police sources and mundane asylum records was a healthy corrective to Prince Jack and Dr. William Gull and all that tosh.

Now we have a very interesting and well-written article in the current 'Ripperologist' by Scott Nelson which argues for a rethink of Cohen as the Ur-Polish Jew suspect, and I tip my top hat to his revisionist efforts.

[Fisherman]

What I am saying is that the police worked from the assumption that the killer would very probably be a maniac BEFORE they had any true leads...

Did they Christer? What is this assumption based on?

Last nighy I had a very interesting telephone conversation on this very subject of the arrogance of the modern researcher with an excellent researcher in the field. Our opinions supported each others in term that the Police of the day were in a far better position to pass judegement on suspects that any modern researcher when considered at that particular moment in time.

Hindsight is great, however not completely reliable.

Monty

Hindsight is good enough for me to avoid dropping it, at any rate, Monty. I think we need to couple that hindsight to the material we have, courtesy of police and press mainly, from 1888, and we will be fine.

In fact, that is what I do when I say that I think that the police were of the meaning that they probably needed to look for a maniac. My hindsight tells me that there is a difference inbetween how we look upon serialists and how they perceived them - and then I add an article from the Dublin Express, dated in December 1888, saying that "detectives have recently visited all the registered private lunatic asylums and made inquiries as to the inmates recently admitted." I then couple this to Anderson´s statement from 1892 that it was "impossible to believe" that the killings could be those of a sane man, and that they must instead be those of a "maniac revelling in blood". What Anderson says here is that although there were both sane people and maniacs around, there was no need to fear that a sane man lay behind the murders.

As for your excellent friend and you and your agreement on the superior knowledge of the police as opposed to us, I´d like to join that club if I may. However, it should be weighed in that the knowledge the police amassed about people, was a knowledge that stretched only to the ones they saw reason to look into. I therefore have no hesitation to say that we may well know a lot more about the people they did NOT decide to look into. In hindsight, that´s not a bad thing.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Now we have a very interesting and well-written article in the current 'Ripperologist' by Scott Nelson which argues for a rethink of Cohen as the Ur-Polish Jew suspect, and I tip my top hat to his revisionist efforts.

Hi Jonathan!

A suggestion: When Rose Mylett died, a host of doctors agreed that she had been killed by means of ligature.
Anderson, however (on Monro´s request) went to Poplar and dissed the doctors totally. He confidently stated that Mylett had died from natural causes.
Doctor Bond, who was sent for, had a look at Mylett and agreed with the other medicos - she had been manually strangled.
In stepped Anderson, with no medical education at all, and told Bond to look again. Which the latter gentleman did, suddenly realizing that Anderson had been right all along; Mylett had fallen over in a drunken stupour and choked on her own collar.
So they needed proof that there was alcohol in Mylett. Dr Brownwell had looked for alcohol and found none, but a second examination was made - guess by whom and on who´s bid? - and lo and behold, there was whisky in Myletts stomach, all of a sudden!

So Mylett would NOT have been killed by Jack, according to Dr Anderson.

Why the need to diss the possibility that she was Jack´s? And how could Anderson be so confident?
Dd that have anything to do with Mylett dying on the 20:th of December, 13 days after Aaron Davis Cohen was taken off the East End streets and taken to the workhouse? Did that ID process take place between the 7:th and the 20:th, assuring Anderson that they had their man?

And this December month is the same month that the Dublin Express stated that the asylums were being vaccuumed for possible perpetrators of the killings, mind you ...

It is a tantalizing bid, I think.

I have not read Scott Nelsons article by the way. If he throws forward the same suggestion, I´m sorry to reiterate it.

The best
Fisherman

[Mad Dan Eccles]

Suspects? No really good ones at all. The police at the time were working on the assumption that JtR was at the very least visibly disreputable and/or eccentric, and quite possibly some sort of obvious maniac or monster, and the general public presumably thought so too. As we now know, he is far more likely to have been a thoroughly respectable and inoffensive member of the community whom nobody would suspect, and who for this reason could easily explain away things like coming home with bloody clothes by telling his wife he'd had a nose-bleed.

So you're most likely looking for a shopkeeper or clerk with no criminal record or obvious signs of insanity who was never suspected by anybody. If that's the real solution, then the only giveaway is likely to be that this person died round about the end of 1888 - not really a lot to go on, therefore JtR's real name has probably never appeared in police records or any book on the subject.

Even the best recent suspects are suspected because they were conspicuous enough for the police to notice them. Francis Tumblety was caught with a rent-boy, which to the Victorian mindset made him a depraved pervert capable of anything. Contemporary sources show that senior officers in the case considered "sexual insanity" to include homosexuality and masturbation, both of which might in their opinion turn you into a serial killer! Tumblety is also known to us because he was pathologically driven to seek attention, wandering around in ludicrous fake military uniforms of his own invention. And the only death he was definitely responsible for came about through a quack medical procedure that went wrong. This guy was a megalomaniac gay snake-oil salesman who couldn't be inconspicuous to save his life, so of course the police noticed him! The real JtR is the guy they didn't notice, so neither did we.

Victims? The usual ones, minus Liz Stride, but possibly plus Martha Tabram.

Leather Apron? Pre-existing urban myth exploited by the nasty little bully Pizer (and possibly like-minded others), never dreaming that he'd accidently connect himself with real murders, thus a complete red herring.

Letters? All fake. Even if not, the best-known ones are so doubtful (especially if Liz Stride was killed by someone else) that any authentic letters are buried in a mass of hundreds of fakes, and probably unidentifiable.

[Jonathan H]

To Fisherman

Sure that's possible.

In my opinion all the primary sources put together lead me to the theory that Anderson never heard of any Polish or Jewish suspect of any note -- except Pizer -- until 1895, when Macnaghten briefed him about 'Kosminski' at about the same time that a prime Ripper suspect (Grant) was perhaps positively identified by a Jewish witness (Lawende) and yet nothing happened. Swanson then refers to a suspect who is deceased.

I also accept R. J. Palmer's [tentative] theory that Anderson's need for Mylett to not be a victim was because he was still hoping that Tumblety was the likely fiend, but he had hightailed it abroad by then.

The McKenzie murder exonerated Tumblety, but the Macnaghten-Druitt-centric timeline from 1898 (in public) of Kelly as the last victim brought the Irish-american back into contention, at least for Littlechild.

To Mad Dan

In his 1914 memoirs, Macnaghten defines sexually insane as a person who gains erotic pleasure from either committing acts of ultra-violence or watching such sadism. Mac put it on file that Druitt was definitely sexually insane, so of course his family 'believed' he was the Ripper.