where do you stand?

[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

[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

[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]

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]

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

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[RivkahChaya]

I just wonder whether Mckenzie might not have been the work of the same hand as Polly and Annie, but FRAILER - weakened or less confident - psychologically, medically, physically? Complicated by being disturbed.

I have wondered how he managed not to nick himself at some point, or whether he did manage not to. He could have given himself a serious case of septicemia, and died shortly after Miller's Court, or if he did recover, taken a hiatus while he was recovering, and afterwards, been more cautious.

If I were writing a fictional account, something like that would happen. The blazing fire in Miller's Court would be because he was experiencing fever chills, and the savageness would be because he thought he was dying, and this might be his last victim.

The only suspects that I am concentrating on are the ones who died, were incarcerated or moved from the area (possible) not long after Kelly's murder. I find it impossible to believe that the murderer can just stop after Kelly, so based on that there are a few good ones to look at.

I used to think that, until Gary Ridgway just up and stopped being the Green River Killer one day.

Montague John Druitt –

I believe Melville MacNaghten was in the perfect position and at an appropriate time to have reviewed the entire investigation (records we cannot see) AND to have learned through hindsight.

If we can make up elaborate scenarios for MJK skipping town, and leaving everyone to think she died in Miller's Court, then how about a story where the killer knew Druitt, knew he was contemplating suicide, and concerned about his mental state, so when Druitt disappeared (and perhaps the killer even knew what had happened to him), the killer started the rumor that Druitt was the Ripper, the one that turned into "his family thought he was the killer," and then skipped town, hoping the investigation would be closed once Druitt's body washed up.

[mklhawley]

Thanks Jonathan. With conflicting evidence, this certainly connects the dots.

To Phil H: I understand your point. I still go back to Chief Inspector Littlechild stating that Anderson 'only thought he knew'. Why is Littlechild so confident of this? He seems to be telling George Sims that he was just as privy to the investigation as Anderson and his judgement is just as good.

Keep in mind, Anderson said absolutely nothing about his contacting the US chiefs of police, but he did. It's not that Anderson lied in his later days, he was merely selective in his discussions. God and Country took priority over everything, and Tumblety being a person of interest in Special Branch meant he was not to be known to the public.

I see Swanson as a man who loved his superior and easily sided with his judgement, especially when it was logical. It's easy to be convinced by your superior and social superior. I'm sure Anderson reciprocated to the enjoyment of Swanson.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Jonathan H]

Top Hat Toff Triumph?

To Mike Hawley

I agree except that I argue -- and I'm alone here -- that Macanghten investigated Druitt thoroughly albeit posthumously; he met with the family or a family member in 1891 (which is fictionalised in Sims as the 'freinds' meeting with the 'police' in 1888).

Top Hat Toff

Actually the historical 'waves' went like this:

In the Edwardian Era ex-police began claiming that they knew the indeitity of the murderer but there was no consensus.

More important than them, the famous George Sims had consolidated the notion of the Ripper as a product of the better classes: middle-aged, independently wealthy, unemployed suregon who should never have been let back onto the streets because he had been diagnosed ('twice') as a homcicidal maniac (though in a 'peculiarly' narrow range: East End harlots). 'Jack' had killed himself within hours of the Miller's Ct. atrocity and a month later his body bobbed up in Thames. His friends had the gravest suspicions about him because of his periodic spells asylums and the police were so on the ball that they had a warrant for his arrest, but they were too late by mere hours.

This story cemented the image, among many which the 1888 crimes had inspired, of the top hat toff -- even though Sims never used such a description.

When Mac retired in 1913 his press coneference, and his subsequent memoirs the following year, were the moment to make it clear for posterity whether the 'drowned doctor' (and not the local lunatic Jew or some dodgy American character -- Sims, 1907) was the defibinitive solution -- and why?

Mac tried, but he had boxed himself into a corner telling so many different fibs to different people, especially Sims (Littlechild was, unwittingly, lifting the veil for Sims on some of this gentlemanly subterfuge).

Macnaghten tried to make it clear that the real Jack was an entirely posthumous suspect, a Gentile 'Simon Pure', and was not a middle-aged doctor who had been 'detained' in any asylum. That 'certain facts' received came to Mac alone, and he was able to lay Jack's ghost to rest. Critically he conceded that the murderer did not kill himself within mere hours of Kelly -- he functioned and then was found to be 'absented' by 'his own people' showing Mac's remarkable powers of recall as this [essentially] fits an 1889 primary source about the inquest into Montie's inexplicable self-murder.

Well, all of that was far too subtle and compromised (eg. a fine writer such as Robin Odell, in 1966, did not even relaise that behind all this opacity was Montague Druitt) to make any impression on the public at all.

Compared to Sims' colourful account, Mac's is tepid (he does not even include the Thames finale -- because he couldn't yet he knew it was true).

He did not even make it clear that he was writing about the same suspect as Sims.

It was an opportunity lost.

The genie of Jack-as-Jekyll was out of the bottle and he could not be put back in.

Mac dies in 1921 and Sims in 1922.

That left precisely nobody to defend the solution, as they would have done had they lived long enough to see William Le Queux, that best selling jingositic fantastist, reboot the entire story as a mystery which had forever flummoxed the constabulary.

This was somewhat fair enough from his point of view as he wrote in 1898 that the 'drowned doctor' fiction was just -- a self-serving cover story. He had been in Whitechapel in 1888 and he knew the cops were not about to arrest an English dooctor or knew the terror was over, not for years.

With his Rasputin fantasy, Le Queux created 'Ripperology'; the idea that subsequent researchers would succeed where the contemporaneous police had allegedly failed.

There was some resistance but it was to no avail:

Empire News (U.K.)
23 October 1923


NEW STORY OF 'JACK THE RIPPER'
RASPUTIN DOCUMENT CHALLENGED

SPECIAL TO 'EMPIRE NEWS'

In his book, 'Things I Know', published this week - see page eight - Mr. William Le Queux claims to have revealed the actual identity of Jack the Ripper. He cites a Rasputin manuscript to the effect that the amazing criminal who terrorized London was a mad Russian doctor sent here by the Secret Police to annoy and baffle Scotland Yard ...

... 'Against this theory, Sir Melville Macnaghten, Chief of the CID at the time, says in his memoirs:-

"'I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about November 10, 1888."

And in favour of the Russian doctor theory Sir Robert Anderson, who was Commissioner of the Police at the time, always maintained the view that the murders were the work of a medical man. '

Note that even Anderson is here subordinated to Mac's solution, but the latter cannot gain traction not without 'doctor' and 'drowned'.

Therefore while Pedachenko -- Ostrog on steroids -- never became the image of Jack, the top hat toff limped on (partly because of Matters denouncing the drowned doctor as a fake) but was fatally cut off from his watery demise. It was the latter element which was true whereas Druitt was not a medical man.

By the time Dan Farson examined the unofficial version of Lady Aberconway's father's 'Report' -- the document which had launched the solution as nEdwardians thought they knew it -- he did not know any of the above.

Worse being a celebrity TV reporter working to a tight deadline he did not have the time or resources to examine this source -- this sensational scoop -- against a myriad of others to work out why Sir Melville had mistaken Druitt for a dcotor?

For example, the official versiont o which he did not again access (but Odell did in 1966) might have made him realise that 'said to be a doctor ...' is contingent whereas 'he was sexually insane ...' is not.

That Macnaghten had probably disguised Druitt as this was a document for public consumption and thus potentially put the surviving family in jeopardy, was unknown to him. But christbael showed the way. She asked him not to use the name in case it cause anguish and pubclis distreess to any descendants.

Are to believe that her father would do any less, or be any less sensitive? That Sims' profile left only winners and no losers caused no ssupicion in the mind of the investigative reporter because he knew nothing about Sims, or all the other sources he need to place 'aberconway' in context.

and so was launched the drowned not-a-doctor whose let down brought about the Royal Conspiracy coming to preeminence not among historians but pop culture.

With the background of Watergate spilling out of the White House like an ugly oil slick, 1973's TV hit 'Jack the Ripper' was narrated by two fictional dectectives (from terrific and realsitic cops shows) Barlow and Watt.

Fictional detectives!

It would be like if 'Starsky and Hutch' re-examined the Lizzie Borden case, or went zooming around Dealey Plaza trying to locate Grassy Knoll witness the CIA had neglected to bump off.

Meanwhile, Mac sources including Sims, and his profile which is clearly fictitious and diversionary are sidelined (some excellent secondary sources, nevetheless, do not include both non-identical versions of his 'memo', or the 1913 cemments in which he is certain are out, or his memoirs which try to carefully rectify and recalibrate the real story behind his fictional confection languish in obscurity).

A major exception is Paul Begg's 'JTR--The Facts' (2006) not because he agrees with any of the above -- he does not -- but simply because he inslcudes everything and is judiciously disatisfied with Macnaghten as a reliable source, but also disatisfied with stale caricatures of Macnaghten as a know-nothing too.

The Top Hat Toff, so despised by today's Ripper cognoscenti, was Macnaghten's admirable triumph (partly over Anderson too) in that he made the 'better classes' face such an unwanted solution: the fiend was a Gentile and a doctor and from the West End.

Against this core truth, that the real figure who lay impenetrably behind this discreet 'shell game' was actually a young barrister from Dorset, hardly mattered.

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

[Phil H]

If I'm allowed one more it would be an anonymous kosher butcher or someone who lived close enough to a kosher abattoir to spend a lot of time watching what went on there.

Are you aware of Robin Odell's non-specific candidate - the Jewish shochet, put forward in his excellent 1965 book?

Phil

[Chava]

Great thread!

I think he killed Nicholls, Chapman, Stride and Eddowes. I think there is an excellent possibility that he killed MJK and a better than good possibility that he killed Tabram. I believe he attacked Ada Wilson. I don't count McKenzie or Coles.

As to who he was, Mr Blotchy tops my list. He sounds suspiciously close to the man who attacked Ada Wilson and to a man seen with earlier victims. I always liked McCarthy the landlord for MJK. But as of today I have to add Bowyer to my list of top suspects. If I'm allowed one more it would be an anonymous kosher butcher or someone who lived close enough to a kosher abattoir to spend a lot of time watching what went on there.

Who 'Leather Apron' was I have no idea but I suspect he is irrelevant to the inquiry.