New Book

[Jonathan H]

Dear Sleuth1888

Thanks for the words of support. Apologies for the delay. If it achieves nothing else at least for the first time (for those few interested) my book will house in one place the following sources re: Macnaghten's solution:

- All three versions of Mac's Report: the 1894 filed version, the 1898 rewrite for public consumption, and the chapter of his 1914 memoir: 'Laying the ghost of Jack the Ripper'.

- Several versions of Macnaghten's 1913 farewell press conference, where he claims to be certain about Jack's identity (just as certain as Anderson; e.g. about a suspect who can ever have his day in court) and that the solution came to him and would exit with him.

- The Rosetta Stone source: the 'West of England' MP articles from 1891; the initial, but by no means the final source of Mac's 'private information'. To be fair, Henry Farquharson as the missing link between Druitt and Macnaghten has already appeared in the excellent book on Edmund Reid by Evans and Connell, in later editions of the A to Z by Fido, Skinner and Begg -- and even in Russell Edwards' recent best seller.

- the 'North Country Vicar' story of 1899 and his claims of hiding the truth via fiction about a Ripper who suffered from 'epileptic mania' and confessed all to an Anglican priest before expiring.

- George Sims' pertinent writings: his 'Mustard and Cress columns for 'The Referee', his short stories (including his Dorcas Dene tales, and a newly uncovered piece about an epileptic maniac confessing his murders to an Anglican priest), his 1892, 1904 and 1905 interviews, and his big piece for 'Lloyds Weekly' in 1907, his 1915 cameo for 'Pearson's Weekly' and his 1917 memoirs. A Dagonet column of 1910 arguably confirms Evans' and Rumbelow's 2006 thesis that Kosminski was not confronted, let alone identified by a Jewish witness.

- Also a vital 1905 article found by Chris Phillips confirming that George Sims was not able to tell the whole Drowned Doctor solution, not without putting the killer's super-respectable relations in peril.

- Excerpts from Guy Logan's 'The True History of Jack the Ripper' from the 'Illustrated Police News' of 1905, with the kind permission of Jan Bondeson ( a story that also says it is an impenetrable mix of fact and fiction).

- Excerpts from Tom Cullen's 'Autumn of Terror' (1965) and Dan Farson's 'Jack the Ripper' (1972), though their alleged clincher sources are rejected (in Cullen's case the McCormick hoax about Backert, and in Farson's his wild goose chase in my country for a document almost certainly about Deeming).

-- A source unknown since 1922 that will, nonetheless, be endlessly debated for its merits and/or demerits, but is certainly incontestably relevant to Montague Druitt as the alleged fiend.

- Excerpts from Lady Christabel Aberconway's memoir, 'A Wiser Woman?' from 1966.

For what it is worth, I have already begun work on my second book:

'JFK - Case Solved, 1964'.

[Rosella]

I'll buy it if it's on Kindle. It will be interesting to read a reappraisal of Druitt after all this time.

[Jonathan H]

It will be.

Sorry to be pedantic, but the book is not a reappraisal of Druitt, nor it is offering a solution to the Whitechapel murders that could be taken to a police inspector or a lawyer or a courtroom.

It is an historical reappraisal of Sir Melville Macnaghten (and George Sims) as a reliable primary source about his posthumous investigation into Montague Druitt as the Ripper, an inquiry that the retired chief alludes to in his 1914 memoir.

My book will try to debunk the persistent (and very unfair) caricature of this police chief, in so many secondary sources as incurious, incompetent and callous. Other books that claim he was competent and compassionate but an under-informed desk-jockey about Druitt are better - but not much better.

You see, we were never meant to know this side of the story, the unofficial investigation into the late Mr. Druitt, and, quite deliberately, almost nothing remains but mere shards and glimpses, plus redundant propaganda.

Nonetheless, I believe we can reconstruct why Druitt was probably believed by his family to be the killer, and how and why Macnaghten, through Sims, went to such elaborate lengths to reveal that solution to the public, albeit veiled.

[Rosella]

Thank you Jonathon.

[Sleuth1888]

Hi Jonathan.

You might to check the price of your book on Amazon. It's going for an astonishingly inflated price. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Ripper-...se+solved+1891

[GUT]

Hi Jonathan.

You might to check the price of your book on Amazon. It's going for an astonishingly inflated price. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Ripper-...se+solved+1891

G'day sleuth

Just guessing but that may be because release was delayed and it was easier to put a silly price on it till new release date than to remove it have to add it again, see it a lot on some sites.

[Jonathan H]

A couple of posters asked about Kindle.

My book is now on Kindle for those interested, or can be ordered from various outlets:

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Ripper-Case-Solved-1891/dp/0786496762/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

or

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Ripper-Case-Solved-1891-Hainsworth-ebook/dp/B017DZQS82/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

[Jonathan H]

Macnaghten - new photo

I have been advised to move across to this thread, which is fair enough.

An apoplectic poster traduced me for writing a "scurrilous rag of a book".

I have waited my whole life for such a denunciation, and I must say it felt as wonderful as I had always dreamed.

Whereas a considerate poster asked me if I have definitely found the source of "private information" for Macnaghten -- and what was in it about Montague Druitt.

The answer is that there were four people who probably provided the information that led Macnaghten to his belief in Druitt's guilt. This belief was shared with, and by George R. Sims, the most famous and popular writer of fiction and non-fiction, and true crime, of his day.

That's quite a claim; that a police chief shared the Ripper solution with a non-policeman and not with his colleagues at Scotland Yard. Nonetheless i make it and my book argues why (the short answer is that Macnaghten did not trust his indiscreet boss, whilst the clan of the deceased suspect was related by a marriage to the clan of a very close friend of Mac's and Sims').

As I show it is likely several sources provided Macnaghten with his "private information", whose names he was too much of a discreet gentleman to put on file; the suspect's older brother, plus his first cousin, plus a distant relation and plus his local MP (the ur-source).

We can also show what was the likely evidence that proved Druitt's guilt to the satisfaction of members of his own family, and several members of the upper class. To only hear the evidence was to become a believer as it was so compelling. One of our major discoveries was a short story by Sims in which, arguably, he outlines the evidence against Mr. Druitt in 1892.

But these, I keep repeating, are historical arguments, not ones for a courtroom or a police room.

If you want a police-procedural type of analysis of the primary sources then this book is not for you.

If you want to discover, however, that the case was believed to be solved by people at the time -- rightly or wrongly -- and why they thought this, then this book is trying to right a far-reaching mistake made by Dan Farson in 1959 due to ignorance and a lack of time to research: that Macnaghten must have had a poor memory (or was under-informed).

No absolute solution is possible now, and was not then as the prime suspect was already deceased. The certainty of some people of the time is as close as we can get. The question then becomes: how reliable are they? My book mounts an historical argument (e.g. provisional and probable) that that are reliable people who left us with reliable sources.

Certainly the book, with new sources and an analysis or others excluded by other books, shows that the conventional wisdom between 1959 and 2015 about Sir Melville Macnaghten -- hands-on sleuth, blessed with both an incredible memory and a genius for public relations -- being supposedly arms-length from his own Ripper solution is unlikely to the point of being untenable.

On my site, if you scroll down, is a photo of Sir Melville when he was about twenty (the book contains an extraordinary, new photo of Montague Druitt as a small boy, staring at the camera, that never fails to jolt people with its "Omen"-style eeriness):

http://www.jjhainsworth.com/

[Mayerling]

Congratulations on finally publishing your book. Also I finally know your last name! Is it going to be sold in outlets like Barnes and Noble in New York City? I don't have "Kindle".

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Jeff

Hope this helps:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jack-the-ripper-case-solved-1891-j-j-hainsworth/1120363986

or this,

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Ripper-Case-Solved-1891/dp/0786496762

The book is only 200 pages of text. But this is deceptive because the font is quite small. It is really about 350 to 400 pages of text, in the usual book.

The poster who denounced me, on another thread, claimed I had nothing new to show in my scurrilous book.

This is demonstrably untrue.

- The private motive driving Sir Melville Macnaghten (and George R. Sims) to disguise and deflect Druitt's identity for public consumption, due to a close friend's connection to the deceased killer (via a relative's marriage), has been unknown since Sims died in 1922. This figure also had a brother-in-law who worked directly for Queen Victoria, e.g. another good reason for the police chief and the famous writer to make the specific identity of the 'Drowned Doctor' unrecoverable to the press and public.

- Three short stories by George R. Sims that are obviously variations of the Druitt solution have never before been published in a Ripper book.

- Guy Logan's extraordinarily revealing "The True History of Jack the Ripper" (1905) was found by Jan Bondeson in 2013 and published as "The Forgotten 1905 Ripper novel". Excerpts from it have been utilized, with permission, for the first time to show that Macnaghten and Sims knew about the real Druitt in minute detail.

- Furthermore, fictional versions of Macnaghten and Sims appear in the latter's short stories, and in Guy Logan's serial, and in "The Lodger" by Marie Belloc Lowndes.

- The "North Country Vicar's" probable identity as a Druitt family member is revealed for the first time in a book, and he too is proven to be connected to that close pal of Macnaghten's and Sims'.

- Plus there are three new photos of Montague Druitt never before published anywhere. One of him as a school prefect -- the only one that is a full-length shot and shows his profile -- appears also on the marvelous, eye-catching cover designed by the American publisher, McFarlands.

Thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy it.

[Mayerling]

Thanks Jonathan.

Jeff

[David Orsam]

But these, I keep repeating, are historical arguments, not ones for a courtroom or a police room.

I read this type of thing quite a lot on the forum and can't help thinking it is based on a misconception. Evidence is evidence. Arguments are arguments. They are either strong or weak. Compelling or ridiculous. This is the case inside a courtroom or outside it. History is what happened, not what a historian likes to think happened. There may be different rules of evidence in a courtroom and differing standards of proof but there should be no difference between the standard of arguments of history and the standard of arguments in a courtroom. They both need to make sense and be supported by the facts, without undue speculation. Otherwise the historian is potentially not writing history but historical fiction.

[Jonathan H]

You couldn't be more wrong.

I saw this with your pieces about Inspector Andrews, when you turned doctrinaire. That only one interpretation -- yours -- was possible, or could be allowed to stand.

It shows a lack of understanding that the past is lost to us, unlike perhaps a contemporaneous murder case; that what we are left with are shadows and footprints, not the things that made them -- depending on how far back you are going.

It is the reason so many secondary sources, e.g. historians, disagree, sometimes diametrically, over the interpretation of what happened in the past, and particularly why it happened. Disagree, that is, over the same topics and the same primary sources.

For example, why did the First World War start just over a hundred years ago?

[David Orsam]

I saw this with your pieces about Inspector Andrews, when you turned doctrinaire. That only one interpretation -- yours -- was possible, or could be allowed to stand.

Jonathan, I never said this or anything similar either in my Suckered! Trilogy or subsequent internet posts. What happened in the discussion thread is that I asked you to provide some evidence that Inspector Andrews went to Canada to do anything relating to Tumblety and you failed to do so, appeared to get upset and ran away from the thread. I didn't turn 'doctrinaire' at all, I simply asked for some evidence which would contradict what I was saying.

That being so, to find unqualified references in your book to 'the now-lost report on Dr Francis Tumblety by Walter Andrews, the inspector who had done a background check on this suspect when visiting Canada a few months before' in circumstances (whether you wrote that sentence before or after my Suckered! Trilogy) where you were fully aware that the reason(s) for Andrews' visit to Canada was disputed, and that there is no evidence for such a report, is very disappointing and, I am sorry to say, not what I would expect from a serious historian.

[David Orsam]

It shows a lack of understanding that the past is lost to us, unlike perhaps a contemporaneous murder case; that what we are left with are shadows and footprints, not the things that made them -- depending on how far back you are going.

I find that sentence extraordinary. We are not left with 'shadows' or 'footprints' from the nineteenth century. We have documents.