Days of My Years

[John Malcolm]

There's a copy up for sale on Ebay that states it is a first edition, but the binding is not like any I've seen. My guess is that it has been re-bound, but I was wondering if anyone has seen this particular one before.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1914-Jack-The-Ripper-Sir-Melville-Macnaghten-Days-Of-My-Years-Scarce-First-/171018117139?pt=Antiquarian_Books_UK&hash=item27d1796013

Also, I've seen Anderson's Criminals and Crime in both red and blue covers- any ideas as to how to tell which one is the "true" first edition?

[Jonathan H]

The Most Critical Primary Source?

It sounds like the edition I have perused at the University of Adelaide (South Australia).

I bought a recently published copy with a modern [generic] cover, and it is from 1915.

In any edition, it is the critical primary source and yet the most neglected.

Anderson, who does not even devote a full chapter to the Ripper, is endlessly debate and analysed, but not Mac's -- who devoted not only an entire chapter to the case (the de-facto third version of his 'memo') focussing only on the un-named Druitt -- but also arguably removed much of the fiction from his Report(s). He even refers to Montie going missing ('absented') which shows that he knew more about the drownedd barrister than what was in PC Moulson's Report.

There are other key bits about the Ripper throughout the book, including is definition of sexual insanity, eg.it's not a variastion on being gay.

Even more astonishing -- and neglected and/or misunderstood -- is that his very brief preface claims that he was not entirely too late to 'have a go' at the Whitechapel fiend. Chapter IV explians why: he identified the murderer posthumously.

In that preface, Mac also suggestively juxtaposes championship cricket, the Ripper and his own 'inaccuracies'.

Is that really just a coincidence?

[Phil H]

Is that really just a coincidence?

IMHO the answer is probably yes.

[Bridewell]

£625? I think I'll keep my wallet firmly closed.

[Jonathan H]

Coincidence? They are legion ...

To Phil H

Perhaps it is a coincidence.

I advise you to read the preface first before you pass judgment.

The entire book is online.

Secondary sources -- including Cullen -- got an aspect wrong.

eg. That Mac was saying he was too late to investigate the Ripper. In fact he is saying the opposite; blaming his six-months-too-late quote on an 'enterprizing' journalist.

But we know from many newspaper sources that in 1913 he did say exactly this, or they all got it wrong.

Plus in his longest chapter, II Eton Memories, though he writes wistfully about school cricket he never mentions that he was dumped from the top cricket team.

Another coincidence is that one source says that Mac started at the Yard in Mid-May 1889, but he always stuck with June 1st. That is almost exactly six months from the date Druitt killed himself, rather than the nearly seven months, eg. the story he was selling Sims.

There are a number of other coincidences which most secondary sources not do not deal with, they are unaware of their existence -- as they were of the correct meaning of the preface to 'Days of My Years' (or of his suggestive juxtaposition of cricket, Ripper and errors).

In reverse order of importance:

4. Macnaghten mentions the Elizabeth Camp case at his 1913 press conference, the same event where he first linked himself in public to an allegedly definitive solution for the Ripper.

A year later his memoirs claim he solved that case too, but a disguise prevented the killer from being nabbed. However, despite the failed witness identification this certain murderer went into an asylum where Mac writes he was 'believed' to have died (eh, sound familiar?).

In fact, Mac seems to have fused several suspects in order for himself to disguise a young barrister who was mad but innocent and eventally released from an asylum.

This suspect was discovered by Chris Phillips a couple of years ago.

Apart from being remarkably similar to the story about 'Kosminski' which Anderson and Swanson believed (when Mac knew he was not deceased and they did not?) Macnaghten also mentions about his composite suspect, whom seems partly based on this young, mad barrister, elements which appear nowhere else in the extant record of the Camp case: 'Thames', 'Blackheath' and being in a mentally disturbed state 'wandering' about.

A newspaper report in 1897 also claimed, from an anonymous police source, that the killer rushed from the train and drowned himself in the Thames.

Again, there is nothing like this in the extant record, except that the following year Griffiths will imply that the doctor was wandering about for three weeks in some kind of mentally disturbed state, and then Sims in 1899 will close that awkward gap to mere hours before the watery plunge.


3. In 1889 a man approached the London bureau of 'The New York Herald' and claimed he had frequently met with the Ripper -- the self-proclaimed witness is described as a 'crank' -- and that he looked like Sims, as the latter appeared on a book of Dagonet poems.

In 1889 Sims has fun with this story, but does not take him or it seriously.

By March 1891, about a month after MP Farquharson is telling the press directly that the as-yet-un-named Druitt is the deceased fiend, Sims returns to the story of his supposed double.

He still treats it as an amusing nuisance but the 'incriminating' picture of the author has changed from his poems to 'The Social Kaleidoscope' of 1879, which is not a collection of Dagonet poems (also the frequent encounters of the killer have become just one).

That picture shows Sims, for the only time -- because he was ill -- with a thin face and with his hair parted in the dead centre.

It looks remrakably like Druitt's last high school pictures, minus the beard.

By the 1900's the story has become fixed by Sims as definitely a sighting of the real Jack by an ordinary coffee-stall owner, and not a cranky Ripper enthusiast.


2. That the 1899 'North Country Vicar' is being dismissed for producing a suspect who is openly a mixture of fact and fiction, and who had plenty of time after Kelly's murder to confess to a priest.

Yet Sims favours a suspect who, unknown to the public and perhaps to the writer too, is also -- covertly -- a mixture of fact and fiction, and who in reality also had plenty of time to confess to whomever he liked.

And, the most implausible coincidence of them all:

1. Sims's profile of the fiend by 1907, presumably from Mac, as a middle-aged, unemployed, affluent recluse, who had been 'twice' sectioned in a madhouse for wanting to savage harlots, and who drowned himself on Nov 9th 1888 is the perfect fix.

Everybody is a winner from this tale and nobody a loser.

The real Ripper had no family only concerned chums, and the police were about to arrest him. Thus Jack the Ripper, the debacle of 1888, was nearly a Scotland Yard triumph.

This profile-tale totally disguises Druitt from the respectable circles in which his surviving relations move.

It disguises Druiitt from the grown-up boys-graduates of the Valentine School.

It enhances the image of Scotland Yard, yet reporters will be unable to find Druitt (or the drowned doctor as later Matters and McCormick negatively discovered) and disprove the tale.

It even side-steps the accusation of being a bit cruel and callous regarding embarrassing the doctor's family and patients -- as he has neither -- and obviously his friends cannot be shocked because they already knew.

And these 'inaccuracies ' which are not repeated in Mac's memoirs, are supposedly the result of Sims making stuff up out of thin air -- and being never corrected by his friend the Assistant Commissioner -- or are due to Mac's poor memory, despite his own 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' also side-stepping the same supposed errors of memory.

[Bridewell]

It's been re-listed at the same price.

[Robert]

Isn't there a budget edition? "Afternoons Of My Years" or something like that?

[Beowulf]

Isn't there a budget edition? "Afternoons Of My Years" or something like that?

Well, there's 'A Day in the life' but you only get one page and it's not very well written because he blew his mind out in a car.

Btw, there is another copy for sale for a couple of hundred less than this one on both Alibris and Abebooks. It is also a first edition.

[Jonathan H]

'Days of My Years' understood in 1951?

Here is -- for me at least -- a fascinating secondary source from nearly a decade before Lady Aberconway's fateful decision to share her father's 'notes' with a trendy television journalist (Dan Farson) who had neither the knowledge, nor the historical training -- nor the time -- to make sense of her father, let alone make sense of her father's memoirs.

I have truncated the soruce, showing only tyhe beginning and the end:

‘The Mirror’ (W.A.) Oct 13th 1951

THE TRUTH ABOUT JACK THE RIPPER

As Told To 'The Mirror' by Ex-C.LB. Inspector HARRY MANN

'Many murders have achieved international notoriety, but in the publicity it evoked and depths of horror it plumbed, there was nothing in die annals of crime to equal the record of Jack the Ripper.

The story of Jack the Ripper has been dealt with in many newspaper articles in books and even in motion picture and radio features, and in the endeavor to add nausea upon nausea and terror upon terror the terrible drama has often been over-played. Result is that a tremendous amount of fiction has become mingled with the truth. ...

... Here again I refer to Sir Melville MacNaghten [sic], Scotland Yard chief. In Sir Melville's opinion the man's brain finally collapsed and he brought about his own destruction. He does not say why that opinion was held, but there is a hint that maybe the Yard held a little more information in the end than has ever been released.

Anyhow, this is Sir Melville's final summing up: 'I Incline to the belief that the Individual who held London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself from his home at certain times and that he committed suicide on or about November 10, 1888.'

His final murder was committed on November 9. Maybe the police found out after his death who he was; maybe he came of a respectable family, and after his violent end no good purpose would have been served and a lot of suffering on innocent people would have been inflicted by disclosing his identity. That dreadful secret is, I think, buried forever in a suicide's grave.'


Here is a policeman in 1950 who is examining 'Days of My Years' prior to the partial publication of the 'Memo', and who can straightfowardly and accurately see that:

1. Macnaghten thinks he knows the Ripper's identity.

2. Yet why Mac thinks this is deliberately veiled from the reader (the timing of Jack's self-murder maybe the next day, or next night, after Kelly does not appear to this reader be the incriminating factor -- and arguably was not incriminating about Druitt).

3. That the Ripper's identity must have become known to the 'police' after the killer's own demise.

4. That the 'police' may have been anxious that a respectable family not be publicly ruined.

For what it is worth, this is exactly what I have been arguing from the other side of the saga in the early 21st Century.

[Smoking Joe]

Jonathan I am beginning to see your theory more clearly these last few weeks.It does have a lot going for it.When coincidence follows coincidence,one might well begin to wonder if it's a little more than mere coincidence.

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Smoking Joe

And that's what it is: a theory.

If Mac, or 'Good Old Mac' as he was apparently known at the Yard, was anxious to protect the reputation of a respectable family then he succeeded for their generation.

Otherwise it is a remarkable series of coincidences, as you say, that this police chief's [acclaimed] memory failed him completely with his crony, George Sims and togrther they created an [un-named] Druitt who would not be recogniseable to those same respectable circles in which the surviving Druitts travelled, nor recogniseable to the grown-up graduates of the Valentine School.

Furthermore Sims' profile of the 1900's (which has additional bits not in either version of the 'Home Office Report') essentially rests on five pieces of evidence:

1. The 'mad doctor' had anatomical knowledge.

In his memoirs Mac did not claim the Ripper was a doctor or had such expertise -- and Druitt was't and he didn't.

2. The doctor had been sectioned ('twice') in a mental institution wherein he was diagnosed as suffering from a homicidal mania which would lead the sufferer to want to savage harlots. Therefore the best suspect's culpability comes from his own lips before the Whitechapel horrors even began.

In his memoirs Mac specifically denied that the Ripper had ever been 'detained' in an asylum by the state, but certainly does not qualify this statement by adding that he had, once or even twice, been a voluntary patient. The impression left is that he had nevere been in a madhgouse -- and Druitt had not been (a detail borrowed from his mother)

3. The Ripper killed himself instantly after the Miller's Ct. slaughter. Had he not done so, Sims assures us, he would have been found wandering around, 'raving' and 'shrieking' and covered in blood, as his mind was destroyed by what he had done. If he had not staggered to a river he would have been picked up and taken straight to an asylum.

In his memoirs Mac has the Ripper get away from the East End and kill himself maybe the next morning, or was it the next afternoon, or was it the next night, or maybe later than that; eg. he could function. That's too long to be 'wandering' about without being noticed covered in blood.

Yes, he was tormented by what he had done and this seems to have led to an internal collapse, but he was 'Protean' and thus capable of many faces. In other words to meet him, to bump into him in the street, you would never guess that one of those faces was tat of a sadistic, sexual maniac.

By extending the timeline from the instant self-murder, of the MP and Sims, Mac knew he would have to drop the watery grave finale -- which we know he knew -- and so he did.

4. According to Sims, the Ripper's 'friends' who were aware of his previous disgnosis as a potential maniac are terrified when their pal disappears from where he lives, which Sims implies is a private home. The unemployed dcotor is a wealthy recluse who is somehow monitored by his concerned chums (which is an awkward and unlikely bit of fiction).

In his memoirs Mac makes no suggestion that the Ripper is an unemployed surgeon, or that he is rich, or that he lives as a recluse. Instead he implies that he lives with his family -- who notice that he is absent at the time of each of the murders.

According to the chief 'His own people' noticed he was 'absented', which we can see is the veiled version of William Druitt trying to find his missing Montie but without giving it away that this is really about a drowned barrister and part-time teacher who lodged at his school (instead he goes out of his way to say the best seller 'The Lodger' -- which has a Ripper who is a young, tormented man who lodges and takes his own life -- is just clever fiction, eg. move along, move along, nothing to see here).

But what Mac is implying is that the 'certain information' which led to a 'conclusion' surely came from these people -- not a go-between -- who helped him to 'lay' to rest this 'ghost' which had haunted Scotland Yard years long after he had destroyed himself (take that, Sir Robert!)

5. The Ripper looked like Sims, and the murderer allegedly told a coffee-stall owner that they were about to hear of two murders that morning (and he was blood-stained). The 'mad dcotor' was, indeed, a dead ringer for the famous writer: a well-dressed, rotund, middle-aged man sporting a naval beard, or so Sims claims.

In fact, the actual picture of Sims from the 1879 'The Social Kaleidoscope' shows him to be younger and markedly thinner and with his hair, for the only time, parted in the dead centre. In 1904 he admitted that it was an atypical picture of himself -- 'haggard' -- because he was ill. Except for the beard it strongly resembles Montague Druitt (who had a moustache by the time he left school).

In the limited extant record the 1889 version of this story is that of a known crank who has supposedly met the fiend several times and is showing around the cover of a different book by Sims (Dagonet's ballads). Whereas the first time the atypical pic interns the extant record is in March 1891; in the wake of the Druitt tale leaking out of Dorset to the Tory MP Henry Farquharson (originally Sims had treated the tale as a joke, whereas by the 1900's its a serious bit of 'evidence') who by theh has shut up, or been told to.

[Michael W Richards]

I find it interesting that so many people take Macnaughtens observations and possible motivations so intensely and seriously....the man penned a document 6 years after the murders and the absolute best he could state was that the primary suspects for the murders were a man who had some unsavory rumors circulating about him, a man with "circumstances" that made him a strong possibility, and a man who it turns out was actually incarcerated at the time of the murders.

Thats 6 years later. Even though the document itself seems really to be an effort to clear Cutbush overall, thats a pretty amateur analysis of potential suspects.

He uses the phrase.."there is no doubt" when describing what he says disturbed the killer in Berner Street, as if it were a known fact that "some Jews" drove up at the time he was to commit further atrocities, and that explains what happened at Mitre Square.

Im sorry, but the man states his opinions in a definitive manner and yet puts on paper ideas that the even the most rudimentary review of the facts can dispute, and he does it after having all the known data on the crimes available to him.

The same credibility issues lie with many of Andersons remarks.

Do these types of comments truly reflect the culmination of years of analysis? Or are they masked to keep secret some elements of the investigations? Or...the less palatable of the choices...were they really that bereft of intelligence that the best they could do is provide personal opinions? Where is the official line on their results?

All the best

[Smoking Joe]

I find it interesting that so many people take Macnaughtens observations and possible motivations so intensely and seriously....the man penned a document 6 years after the murders and the absolute best he could state was that the primary suspects for the murders were a man who had some unsavory rumors circulating about him, a man with "circumstances" that made him a strong possibility, and a man who it turns out was actually incarcerated at the time of the murders.




All the best

Macnaughton wrote what he wrote while having in his possession much more info than we have knowledge of.
At one time that parcel of knowledge was complete.By the time that parcel reached us,some of the contents had been lost,stolen or re-routed.We have only what survived. It isnt a great deal.Its unwise to dismiss Macnaughtons words based on what we know now,when we dont know what he knew. There are too many "knows" in that sentence .....but never mind.

[Michael W Richards]

Macnaughton wrote what he wrote while having in his possession much more info than we have knowledge of.

Hi Smoking Joe,

That is my precise point above...if this man had more knowledge than we possess today, or knowledge that has since been lost...how is it that all the cumulative data he had only provided him with that very weak "Suspects" list? One would think that 6 years after the murder, and after the file on the Whitechapel Murders went dormant then closed, they would have been able to determine that Ostrog was actually in jail at the time of the murders. If he was a primary suspect, which the list leads us to believe, then explain how 6 years after the fact the man cited someone who modern Ripperologists,...many decades after the fact, discovered could not possibly have committed any Ripper murders. He wasnt even in London.

If you consider that among the most senior investigative officials there are statements that state the man was institutionalized, the man drowned himself, that there was a ID by a witness at a Seaside Home in the winter of 89...(which of course would mean that Druitt was not the Ripper),... that Chapman was the Ripper, that no-one knew who the Ripper was, or that the truth was a "hot potato"....you really have to question any and all of their statements Joe.

We are told both that they did not know who he was, and that they did know who he was and that he was tucked safely away. That they had him in custody through the Winter of 89, and that he died in 88. That he only committed the Canonical Five murders...yet look at the reaction to Alice MacKenzie, and the line-up for Sadler a few years later.

If there was a list of all the comments made by all the senior investigators speaking to the issue of the killers identity and his outcome.....we'd be looking at a very contradictory list of opinions.

Cheers.

[Smoking Joe]

Hi Smoking Joe,

That is my precise point above...if this man had more knowledge than we possess today, or knowledge that has since been lost...how is it that all the cumulative data he had only provided him with that very weak "Suspects" list? One would think that 6 years after the murder, and after the file on the Whitechapel Murders went dormant then closed, they would have been able to determine that Ostrog was actually in jail at the time of the murders. If he was a primary suspect, which the list leads us to believe, then explain how 6 years after the fact the man cited someone who modern Ripperologists,...many decades after the fact, discovered could not possibly have committed any Ripper murders. He wasnt even in London.

If you consider that among the most senior investigative officials there are statements that state the man was institutionalized, the man drowned himself, that there was a ID by a witness at a Seaside Home in the winter of 89...(which of course would mean that Druitt was not the Ripper),... that Chapman was the Ripper, that no-one knew who the Ripper was, or that the truth was a "hot potato"....you really have to question any and all of their statements Joe.

We are told both that they did not know who he was, and that they did know who he was and that he was tucked safely away. That they had him in custody through the Winter of 89, and that he died in 88. That he only committed the Canonical Five murders...yet look at the reaction to Alice MacKenzie, and the line-up for Sadler a few years later.

If there was a list of all the comments made by all the senior investigators speaking to the issue of the killers identity and his outcome.....we'd be looking at a very contradictory list of opinions.

Cheers.

Yes QUite, I cant disagree with what you have written.My feeling ,for what it is worth, is that The 3 suspects were THE police suspects and not Macnaughtons initially.Nothing could be definitively proved as regards any of them. Then Macnaughton few years later heard or received information which convinced him, and enabled him to put the hat on Druitt.
I suppose it depends when the Police actually recognised that Ostrog was in jail at the time of the murders,as to why he was on the list. Description perhaps.WhetherThe I.D parade etc of Kosminski ever took place I feel is questionable.Maybe the contradictory opinions of Police Officials were an attempt to mislead.After all ,Druitt was dead,the Druitt family name needed to be preserved etc .And who knows how much "clout" the Druitt family had in higher circles etc.
Yes it is all very confusing , whether by deliberate Design,accident or incompetence its hard to say.I believe something was happening that we dont properly understand,and Jonathans argument answers a lot of those issues (in my opinion) .
Feel free to disagree Michael , there are few that would agree with me ,so no worries......At times Im not even sure I agree with myself.
Though for me Druitt is the man, by what ever route,if only for the fact that for a man who seems to be out of place on any such list,he has somehow contrived to get to the very top of that list.For no reason other than committing suicide? "No proof he ever went to Whitechapel ,therefore he wasnt the killer" say the anti-Druittists It is a stupid "Alibi" No proof that he didnt either is there? Id hazard a guess that some know far more about Druitt than they make out. Maybe some Anti -Druittist's doth protest too much? All of which is speculation of course on my part.
kind regards