Duke of Bedford

[SuspectZero]

Hi guys,
What does anyone know about the Duke of Bedford?

[DJA]

Herbrand Russell?

Prolly his father Francis.

[SuspectZero]

Hi guys,
What does anyone know about the Duke of Bedford?

No. George William Francis Sackville Russell, the 10th Duke of Bedford. I'm asking because it appears he may have been a patient at the Manor House Asylum in Chiswick and according to Philippe Jullian, in his book Edouard VII, he was rumored to be involved in the JTR murders.
(1962).

[DJA]

Crikey! I was close.

His father shot himself,if that helps.

[Errata]

Yeah that's a bit of an odd family. They had a bad run there starting in the mid 1800s.

A diabetic seems a poor candidate for an asylum. Most behavioral oddities would (probably correctly) be ascribed to the diabetes, and not madness. While hospitalization or a "rest cure" type thing might be warranted, I can't imagine anyone willing to commit him into an asylum for what they would know to be a temporary condition of oddity.

Unless of course he was diabetic AND mad, in which case the diabetes really ought to have killed him a LOT quicker. Like in his early 20s.

[SuspectZero]

Yeah that's a bit of an odd family. They had a bad run there starting in the mid 1800s.

A diabetic seems a poor candidate for an asylum. Most behavioral oddities would (probably correctly) be ascribed to the diabetes, and not madness. While hospitalization or a "rest cure" type thing might be warranted, I can't imagine anyone willing to commit him into an asylum for what they would know to be a temporary condition of oddity.

Unless of course he was diabetic AND mad, in which case the diabetes really ought to have killed him a LOT quicker. Like in his early 20s.

Oddly some additional case notes on him have been removed (torn out) and are missing.

[DJA]

There is an edition of Edward and the Edwardians on eBay.

I can get a loan of the book from our National Library.

Also available online.

[Errata]

Oddly some additional case notes on him have been removed (torn out) and are missing.

The 10th Duke was quite a sick man. Remember there was no insulin treatment back then, and the only way to control the illness was diet and exercise. And this would have been Juvenile diabetes. Not Type II. So he was living only until his pancreas died. 40 is actually remarkable. He would have been very ill in 1888. And any extra exercise on his part would have dropped his blood sugar to the point of potentially passing out, so I don't see him eviscerating bodies necessarily. It was a very delicate thing for a diabetic to stay alive.

But even today if a diabetic is mentally ill, that is a critical problem. If they don't take care of themselves, if they don't remember their medication, both of which are devastatingly common symptoms with most mental illnesses, they will die. Even today. Back then it was probably a death sentence.

I don't know what case notes are missing, from the asylum, from his family records or what. And I imagine those missing pages could contain any number of horrors or dirty little secrets. And it's certainly tempting to see the Ripper in that. But a necessarily unmedicated diabetic 5 years from death? I'd need some kind of proof he was supernaturally healthy to believe it.

[DJA]

Philippe Jullian, in his book Edouard VII, he was rumored to be involved in the JTR murders.
(1962).

Camille Julian was Philippe's grandfather.

Edward spent much time in France.

Same era.

[Rosemary]

My darlin

Yeah that's a bit of an odd family. They had a bad run there starting in the mid 1800s.

A diabetic seems a poor candidate for an asylum. Most behavioral oddities would (probably correctly) be ascribed to the diabetes, and not madness. While hospitalization or a "rest cure" type thing might be warranted, I can't imagine anyone willing to commit him into an asylum for what they would know to be a temporary condition of oddity.

Unless of course he was diabetic AND mad, in which case the diabetes really ought to have killed him a LOT quicker. Like in his early 20s.

I'm Southern. Is oddity really a temporary condition?

[DJA]

It can be if you shoot yourself

[Mayerling]

A revival of an old candidate.

I seem to recall that there was a thread either on the previous Casebook website or somewhere on this one about the Duke of Bedford as a suspect. His relative, Lord Bertram Russell, mentioned his mental instability in his memoirs - even suggesting (I seem to remember) the Duke killing a servant at one point.

The Russell family was not unknown to being involved in murder cases. In 1840 Lord William Russell was the victim of his valet, Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, who cut his Lordship's throat in his bed in their home on Park Lane in London. Courvoisier, after a trial (where his barrister, Charles Phillips, tried to prove the murder was the work of another innocent servant - after he learned from Courvoisier that he did it but expected Phillips to continue defending him), was convicted and hanged.

Oddly enough, Lord Bertram was a member of the Bloomsbery group of intellectuals and artists (Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant) that included Virginia Woolf, a cousin of another Ripper suspect - James Kenneth Stephen. And James Kenneth's father, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, was the trial judge in the trial of Florence Maybrick for the poison murder (if it was a murder) of James Maybrick (also a suspect).

Jeff

[DJA]

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/cjmorley/4.html

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-evansorigins.html?printer=true

[Errata]

I'm Southern. Is oddity really a temporary condition?

It is when it's from low blood sugar.

But the whole family was also what we would consider to be quintessentially Southern odd. Shut ins, suicides, bastards, intellectuals, inventors, patrons of the arts, I think one of the was the President of a Cremation society?

very Midnight In The House Of Good And Evil.

[Robert]

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4924/6487.html