The Murder Castle

[HerlockSholmes]

On 6/13/2023 at 9:00 PM, HerlockSholmes said:

But I didn’t say that he MUST guilty Hikari, only that he could have been. The evidence for all suspects is circumstantial so we can’t come close to naming anyone with any level of confidence (although that doesn’t prevent a few people doing exactly that) Perhaps a better way of putting it from my own point of view is that from a list of largely poor suspects Druitt is one of the very few where there might be something there. I  stress the word might though.

As you know, Melville MacNaghten was the Assistant Chief Constable in 1894 (subordinate to Anderson) so he had all the resources of the Metropolitan Police at his disposal. That meant access to prison and asylum records going back way before the murders. Large lists of dead or permanently incarcerated violent men who he could have named in his memo (if he was only compiling a list of scapegoats) Druitt sticks out like the sorest of thumbs in my opinion. Now this doesn’t come close to allowing us to accuse him of being the killer of course but in my opinion it’s a valid point. So the possibilities are….

Macnaghten just plucked his name at random - unlikely in the extreme imo.

That a family member was trying to frame him - unlikely in the extreme imo. What upper class family would want the ripper as a member (given their horror of scandal and disgrace)

That the family had genuine fears that he might have been the ripper and MacNaghten agreed but they were wrong - entirely possible imo.

That the family had genuine fears that he might have been the ripper and MacNaghten agreed and they were right - entirely possible imo.

Druitt’s mother wasn’t involved in politics. She was in an asylum at the time of Druitt’s suicide. The evidence points away from a spur of the moment suicide because a note was found in his room after he was pulled out of the Thames so he wrote the note then bought the return ticket. It’s suspected that he might have gone to see his mother in the asylum.

…..

All circumstantial of course (and there is more) but we’ll never know. The ripper case, like all cases, is rife with rumour and oral histories. It’s not impossible of course that some might contain a kernel of truth (or not) An example:

In January 1899 workers at The Daily Mail opened a letter which came from an anonymous North Country Vicar who said that the ripper had confessed to a fellow priest. Strangely the vicar had titled his letter The Whitechurch Murders - Solution of a London Mystery. Why Whitechurch instead of Whitechapel which was clearly what he was referring to? There was actually a parish which was called alternately Whitchurch Canonicorum or Whitechurch though. It’s priest was The Reverend Charles Druitt…Montague’s cousin and the man who married into the family of one of MacNaghten’s best friends.

The point that I’ve emboldened is poorly written and needs to be clarified.

Druitt had written a suicide note although we have no way of knowing exactly when he wrote it. He then bought a return ticket to Hammersmith but committed suicide before using the return part which is strange of course and has led some to suggest that Druitt might have been killed by someone or some people because he’d either confessed or that they had found out and that it was made to look like suicide. All speculation of course but the evidence appears to indicate that Druitt, for whatever reason, changed his mind about when or where he was going to end his life. 

[Hikari]

I forgot about the stones in his pockets.  That certainly seems intentional.  What is curious, apart from the train ticket, is that he threw himself in the river with his valuable pocket watch, and several thousand pounds in gold and cheques.  Strange he didn’t leave all those valuables in his room with the note.  With so much insanity in the family and a family legacy of suicide, Montague’s fragile mental state was probably not attributable to remorse over being the Ripper since he had so many other potential reasons for ending his life.  He was a high flyer and quite a remarkable mind and athletic talent before going off the rails.  It was a sorry end for a promising life— But there are definitely murky waters here and we don’t know the whole story.

[HerlockSholmes]

On the various pieces of circumstantial evidence and potential hints etc I’ll add another one. James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl Of Crawford wrote this letter to Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner Of The Met:

My dear Anderson,

I send you this line to ask you to see & hear the bearer, whose name is unknown to me. She has or thinks she has a knowledge of the author of the Whitechapel murders. The author is supposed to be nearly related to her, & she is in great fear lest any suspicions should attach to her & place her & her family in peril. I have advised her to place the whole story before you without giving you any names, so that you may form an opinion as to its being worthwhile to investigate.

Very sincerely yours,

Crawford.

 

In November 1888 Isabella Druitt wrote an anxious letter to her daughter Emily where she mentions an ‘encumbrance’ that she might never be rid of. She told Emily that she had visited Cavendish Square because of this. The Earl Of Crawford lived in Cavendish Square.

Also, when I mentioned that one of MacNaghten’s best friends was related by marriage to the Druitt’s I was talking about a man called Colonel Vivian Majendie. The Earl of Crawford’s younger sister was Lady Margaret Majendie.

[Carol the Dabbler]

@Herlock -- hmm, interesting.  It does sound like Druitt's mother believed that he might be the Ripper -- or, for some reason, wanted the authorities to believe so.

Could that "emcumbrance" have been what triggered her acute depression?  Or, on the other hand, could her mental state have somehow created the fear that her son was an unspeakable criminal?

So many interesting questions!  So few answers!

 

[HerlockSholmes]

My apologies Carol, I should have said, Isabella was actually Druitt’s aunt and the family matriarch at the time. His mother Ann was already incarcerated at the time. It’s possible that the encumbrance could have been Druitt’s suicide but although it was considered shameful at the time by society  it’s difficult to see it as something that could have placed any kind of lasting shadow over the family. 
 

There’s enough going on in the Druitt story to at least leave you thinking that there might be more to it imo.

Could there have been anything suspicious about Druitt’s death….it’s possible (theories have been considered and written about). Could there have been any kind of concealment at the Inquest? Who knows, but the Coroner Diplock was a friend of the Druitt family. The pub where the inquest occurred still exists btw. I’ve always wondered why only a part of the suicide note was ever read out? Was there something else in it that the family didn’t want revealing?

[Hikari]

On 6/16/2023 at 7:03 PM, HerlockSholmes said:

My apologies Carol, I should have said, Isabella was actually Druitt’s aunt and the family matriarch at the time. His mother Ann was already incarcerated at the time. It’s possible that the encumbrance could have been Druitt’s suicide but although it was considered shameful at the time by society  it’s difficult to see it as something that could have placed any kind of lasting shadow over the family. 
 

There’s enough going on in the Druitt story to at least leave you thinking that there might be more to it imo.

Could there have been anything suspicious about Druitt’s death….it’s possible (theories have been considered and written about). Could there have been any kind of concealment at the Inquest? Who knows, but the Coroner Diplock was a friend of the Druitt family. The pub where the inquest occurred still exists btw. I’ve always wondered why only a part of the suicide note was ever read out? Was there something else in it that the family didn’t want revealing?

A possible encumbrance might have been blackmail, perhaps?  “Encumbrance she would never be rid of” suggests some kind of ongoing and distasteful obligation, and the use of the term “encumbered” has a financial feel to it.  Estates are encumbered; debts too.  She could have been referring to the encumbrance of the guilt of the knowledge that Montague was the Ripper, but the term she used is suggestive of other possibilities.  It seems inescapable that Montague was embroiled  in some kind of a scandal shortly before his death.  He made enemies clearly, because he lost his job. I still favor a sexual scandal involving underage boys. That would’ve been an item the family could’ve been blackmailed over… Ongoing payments in favor of suppressing the sexual abuse of children perpetrated by MD.  Based on the available photographs, MD seems quite an effeminate person, not that that is proof of anything, but it would be helpful to know what contemporary sources meant by publishing that he suffered from “sexual insanity”.  Despite the note found in his room that definitely sounds like a suicidal frame of mind… it doesn’t overtly say he is going to kill himself, just that he wonders if he wouldn’t be better off doing so because he could feel himself going off the rails like Mother.  His pockets were full of stones, and they were also full of money which is an interesting juxtaposition. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that one of Montague's enemies, perhaps a father of a school boy victim stuffed stones in his pockets and forced him to jump into the river. That might seem outlandish, but a staged suicide would save everyone the trouble of a trial for sodomy or other. That would also be an excellent reason for Montague to want to end his life purposefully. Filling her pockets with stones and walking into the river is how Virginia Woolf committed suicide.  I think more women would favor at this method. I might expect a gentleman to do something even more decisive and guaranteed to succeed: use of a handgun. Montague’s mysterious end is a sad coda for him and his family even if it doesn’t put an end to the Ripper speculation.

[Carol the Dabbler]

4 hours ago, Hikari said:

A possible encumbrance might have been blackmail, perhaps?

Y'know, that could explain both the money in his pockets and the train ticket.  Suppose someone threatened to expose some secret of Druitt's or even a baseless rumor about him, and said to meet him at such-and-such a place in order to make the payoff.  So Druitt did so, bringing the money and of course the return portion of his train ticket.  But the "blackmailer" was not actually interested in money, just wanted to discredit and silence him.  So when they met, the "blackmailer" may have knocked him unconscious, possibly even killed him, but at any rate put stones in his pockets (or forced him to do so), then dumped him in the river (or made him enter it).  The stones guaranteed that any evidence of blunt-instrument crime would have been obliterated by decay by the time the body was found.

4 hours ago, Hikari said:

Based on the available photographs, MD seems quite an effeminate person, not that that is proof of anything....

Even nowadays a man can be accused of homosexuality merely on the grounds that he's "too" handsome.  I've seen this sort of nonsense online even though I don't frequent the sorts of sites where one might expect to encounter it.  Back when homosexuality was officially considered a form of insanity, heaven only know how much easier it may have been to "prove" such allegations.

 

[HerlockSholmes]

9 hours ago, Hikari said:

A possible encumbrance might have been blackmail, perhaps?  “Encumbrance she would never be rid of” suggests some kind of ongoing and distasteful obligation, and the use of the term “encumbered” has a financial feel to it.  Estates are encumbered; debts too.  She could have been referring to the encumbrance of the guilt of the knowledge that Montague was the Ripper, but the term she used is suggestive of other possibilities.  It seems inescapable that Montague was embroiled  in some kind of a scandal shortly before his death.  He made enemies clearly, because he lost his job. I still favor a sexual scandal involving underage boys. That would’ve been an item the family could’ve been blackmailed over… Ongoing payments in favor of suppressing the sexual abuse of children perpetrated by MD.  Based on the available photographs, MD seems quite an effeminate person, not that that is proof of anything, but it would be helpful to know what contemporary sources meant by publishing that he suffered from “sexual insanity”.  Despite the note found in his room that definitely sounds like a suicidal frame of mind… it doesn’t overtly say he is going to kill himself, just that he wonders if he wouldn’t be better off doing so because he could feel himself going off the rails like Mother.  His pockets were full of stones, and they were also full of money which is an interesting juxtaposition. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that one of Montague's enemies, perhaps a father of a school boy victim stuffed stones in his pockets and forced him to jump into the river. That might seem outlandish, but a staged suicide would save everyone the trouble of a trial for sodomy or other. That would also be an excellent reason for Montague to want to end his life purposefully. Filling her pockets with stones and walking into the river is how Virginia Woolf committed suicide.  I think more women would favor at this method. I might expect a gentleman to do something even more decisive and guaranteed to succeed: use of a handgun. Montague’s mysterious end is a sad coda for him and his family even if it doesn’t put an end to the Ripper speculation.

Blackmail is a possibility which has been suggested Hikari (as you won’t be surprised to hear considering how long there has been interest in the case) and the motive suggested by you is plausible but it’s also possible that there could have been other possible explanations. A few examples….
 

He’d become violent toward the boys or a staff member.

Inappropriate behaviour toward a female servant.

It had been discovered that he’d been frequenting prostitutes.

Some financial issue.

Something in connection to the murders.

A woman turns up at the school claiming to be carrying Druitt’s baby.

 

The woman mentioned in the Crawford letter could simply have been a crank of course but I think that it’s at least an interesting possibility that it might have been Druitt’s aunt. As you’ve said, and I wouldn’t dispute it, the possible case for Druitt as the killer is entirely circumstantial with some interesting speculation thrown in but….I know, there’s always a but 😀 I do find it intriguing that in an unsolved case so many suggestions and pointers were made to Druitt as the guilty party. Yes, there’s a hint of the ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ argument about that but it doesn’t change the fact that there could have been something in it and although we know far more about crime, psychology and the behaviour of killers today there’s a lot to be said for the voices of those who actually around at the time. 135 years later we have a huge amount of evidence no longer available to us. Apologies for sounding like I’m presenting the case for Druitt’s guilt but I’ll just add a bit of a list:

West Country M.P. Henry Farquaharson claimed in 1891 that the ripper was the son of a surgeon who committed suicide after the Kelly murder.

Sir Melville MacNaghten, Assistant Chief Constable (later Chief Constable) of the Met was still favouring Druitt when he retired.

Major Arthur Griffiths, Mysteries of Police and Crime: “There is every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts about him. He was also a Doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be insane, or on the borderline of insanity, and he disappeared immediately after the last murder, that in Miller’s Court on 9th November 1888. On the last day of that year, seven weeks later, his body was found floating in the Thames and was said to have been in the water a month.”

Albert Bachert of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee: “I was given this information in confidence about March 1889. It was then suggested to me (by the police) that the Vigilance Committee and it’s patrols might be disbanded as the police were quite certain that the ripper was dead……He was fished out of the Thames two months ago and it would only cause pain to relatives if we said more than that.”

Watkin Williams, grandson of Sir Charles Warren (head of the Met at the time of the murders) said: “My impression is that he believed the murderer to be a sex-maniac who committed suicide after the Miller’s Court murder - possibly the young Doctor whose body was found in the Thames on 31st December 1888,”

Sir John Moylan, Assistant Under Secretary at the Home Office: “ The murderer, it is now certain, escaped justice by committing suicide at the end of 1888.”

Sir Basil Thomson, Assistant Commissioner of the CID in 1913: “ In the belief of the police, he was a man who committed suicide in the Thames at the end of 1888.”

In February 1902, the well known journalist George Sims said: ”The homicidal maniac who SHOCKED TNE WORLD as Jack the Ripper had been once - I am not sure that it was not twice - in a lunatic asylum. At the time his body was found in the Thames, his friends, who were terrified at his disappearance from their midst, were endeavouring to have him found and placed under restraint again.”

[Hikari]

Had Montague been committed to an asylum before?  We know the two Jewish suspects had been, and both died inside the same institution.  Could a man really successfully obtain employment at the bar and in a school with mental commitments on his record? The contemporary suspicion of Druitt certainty seems damning, but I remain troubled that his chief accuser in law enforcement couldn’t correctly identify his age or profession and kept repeating the same errors in print.  Almost like he wasn’t sure who he was talking about. That is inexcusably shoddy police work.  Our young Mr Druitt was living some dark and convoluted secret life.  To manage two professions simultaneously, along with an active extracurricular cricket hobby that involved travel to out of country matches paints a picture of a very industrious person of high energies.  It seems he was managing a complex life to a high-level until having some kind of breakdown in the last months of his life. If we add in stalking  prostitutes in Whitechapel and committing 5 (at least) heinous murders into the mix, I don’t see how Montague was sleeping at all. Burning the candle at both ends as well as the middle like this would certainly drive someone over the edge.

I’m just wondering, if the evidence was so strong against Druitt, and the family testimony so compelling that high government officials and top brass LE officials repeated it and were convinced in their own minds that the Ripper had been identified correctly and had done himself in, why in the intervening century plus this incriminating evidence has not been released. One can assume that all of Druitt’s relatives and those of his victims are now deceased.  In the public interest, the Druitt case files should be released.  All we’ve seen is basically speculation of some public figures wondering aloud or reporting hearsay.  If MD is patently guilty, let’s see more specific proof.  We haven’t seen any since 1889. What we’ve got is in the realm of family folklore and urban legend. Did the school destroy all of the records of the incident which forced them to dismiss this teacher? If Montague was the ripper it would be nice to put this to bed forever, but if he wasn’t, then he has been libeled and slandered in perpetuity.

Druitt’s cricket club, of which he was an officer, removed him summarily from their membership roll after the Kelly murder but weeks before his body was found.  The reason cited being that they had received information that he had “gone abroad.“ Now this is very interesting; who told them this? Or is this the story they told because they knew of some reason why they did not want the man who had to that point been one of their star players as well as their vice president involved in the club anymore?  And what was that reason?   Was “gone abroad” a euphemism for “We know he’s dead and why but are not at liberty to publicize this.”

We definitely have not heard the whole story here.

[HerlockSholmes]

The problem is that even though MacNaghten had a strong inclination toward Druitt (based on the private information that he’d received) he never said that he was definitely guilty so it looks like whatever the evidence was it wasn’t sufficient to be considered proof of guilt.

There’s no evidence of Druitt ever being in an asylum (though George Sims said that the killer had been confined, possibly twice, there’s nothing to back this up.

One of the complaints that’s levelled against Druitt as a suspect is that there’s no physical evidence connecting him to Whitechapel but to be honest I’ve always found this a weak point. We’ve all done things in our recent past that we couldn’t provide evidence for if asked and let’s face it, there weren’t many places in Victorian Whitechapel that called for a visitors book to be signed.

Druitt did have a cousin called Lionel though who was a doctor that lived in the Minories up until around 1886. This was around 2 minutes walk from Mitre Square. Also, in April 1886 Conservative politician JG Talbot held a meeting in Kings Bench Walk (where Druitt’s chambers were) to get Barristers to join the mission at Oxford House (which had opened in 1844) in Bethnal Green. It was a place where the better off (inc Oxford men) could live among the poor and help them. It was a more religious movement than Toynbee Hall. (The North Country Vicar claimed that the ripper was part of a movement rescuing poor women in the East End.) So, like a lot of men of his class, it’s far from impossible that he could have done this kind of charity work. Fallen women?

[Carol the Dabbler]

2 hours ago, HerlockSholmes said:

Druitt did have a cousin called Lionel though who was a doctor that lived in the Minories up until around 1886. This was around 2 minutes walk from Mitre Square.

So you're saying the cousin may have been the anonymous doctor who was claimed to have been the Ripper?  And/or that some people may have gotten the two cousins confused and combined in their heads?

 

[Hikari]

1 hour ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

So you're saying the cousin may have been the anonymous doctor who was claimed to have been the Ripper?  And/or that some people may have gotten the two cousins confused and combined in their heads?

 

If the Druitt family were prone to insanity, then Cousin Lionel might have been similarly afflicted.  And he lived a 2-minute walk from one of the infamous murder sites…had resided in Whitechapel for some time…and he was a *doctor*?  I’ve got to say that cousin Lionel is looking better for it then Montague.  M. Had office space nearby, true but his residence was elsewhere and he was just so busy with two jobs plus the cricket… I don’t think he would’ve additionally had time to be involved in a charity for downfallen women.  But his cousin the doctor would be well placed to be involved, eh?  Someone involved with a local charity might even have been known to some of the victims as a friendly face… earning their trust if they happened to encounter him whilst doing business.  Jack’s knife work points to anatomical knowledge and comfort with blades.  I don’t think I buy the “Montague watched his father at work and that’s how he picked it up” theory.  Unless daddy Dr. Druitt gave regular dissection lessons at the family kitchen table, how would young Monty have watched his father at work?  A 12, 13 year old boy allowed into the operating theater?  Doesn’t seem plausible.  But there’s a cousin who lives in Whitechapel and went to medical school?!  Why haven’t we heard about Cousin Lionel before?

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Hikari said:

Why haven’t we heard about Cousin Lionel before?

Good question!

Maybe we have, though, just not by name.

 

[HerlockSholmes]

Lionel Druitt was definitely a Doctor who lived at 140 Minories before moving to Clapham Road. He’s out as a suspect though as he emigrated to New South Wales, Australia in 1886.

Another piece of speculation in regard to medical knowledge…..Druitt got his degree in 1880 but wasn’t admitted to the Inner Temple to train as a Barrister until 1882 so some researchers have suggested that he might initially have begun medical training (following in his Father’s footsteps) but then decided to move to law. As I said, it’s pure speculation of course but there is an unexplained gap.

It tends to be assumed that Druitt lodged at the Blackheath school but is that a definite? When he died he had a season rail ticket from London to Blackheath…would he have needed that if he lived and worked in Blackheath, making the odd trip into London on legal business? Possibly. But it’s not impossible that he had a room elsewhere too.

[Carol the Dabbler]

7 hours ago, HerlockSholmes said:

... it's not impossible that he had a room elsewhere too.

... especially considering that he had two careers.  Maybe legal business tended to take him to London.

It's highly unlikely that any records of his lodgings would still exist.  Even back in his day, an investigation would have needed to go literally door to door.

 

[Hikari]

8 hours ago, HerlockSholmes said:

Lionel Druitt was definitely a Doctor who lived at 140 Minories before moving to Clapham Road. He’s out as a suspect though as he emigrated to New South Wales, Australia in 1886.

Another piece of speculation in regard to medical knowledge…..Druitt got his degree in 1880 but wasn’t admitted to the Inner Temple to train as a Barrister until 1882 so some researchers have suggested that he might initially have begun medical training (following in his Father’s footsteps) but then decided to move to law. As I said, it’s pure speculation of course but there is an unexplained gap.

It tends to be assumed that Druitt lodged at the Blackheath school but is that a definite? When he died he had a season rail ticket from London to Blackheath…would he have needed that if he lived and worked in Blackheath, making the odd trip into London on legal business? Possibly. But it’s not impossible that he had a room elsewhere too.

What is the distance from Blackheath to his chambers in the East End?   Which room was the ostensible suicide note found in?  If the two locations are close enough for a rail journey of an hour or less, maybe he was back and forth between the school and chambers often enough to make it worthwhile.  It's hard to imagine that he could have had anything like a full-time post at either position.  Am I right in thinking that he was a PE teacher at the school?  Maybe he was only there a few days a week, or half-days in order to teach sport . .or maybe he was only in chambers a few days a week.  Being on staff and a school AND a practicing lawyer in a completely different jurisdiction would be too demanding to be combined on a daily basis.  The only way it would be manageable is if one of his jobs was quite sporadic or less than half-time.  

I do favor the theory that the Ripper might have been someone with more than rudimentary anatomical training via being a medical student or working in a morgue perhaps.  I assume that the medical college rolls and local hospitals would have been canvassed for any former students/employees who might have been dismissed for inappropriate/disturbing behavior.  The Ripper didn't remove enough organs from the scenes to have been a body snatcher but maybe he was familiar with that business.  He had no qualms about dissecting his victims but his work lacked the precision of a highly trained surgeon.  If MD had begun medical training and done a couple of years, but had to quit due to his nervous constitution or having been dismissed, he'd certainly have had enough skill to do the Ripper's work.  Him or someone like him.  I try and fail to really imagine either of the Jewish lunatics being the author of all of these murders.  Both were mentally unsound and both worked with sharps in their day jobs.  A butcher would know more about removing internal organs than a tailor, I would imagine, but neither of them appeared to have the mental organization exhibited by the Ripper at least in the earlier going.  

I don't suppose we will ever know . . . 

[Carol the Dabbler]

3 hours ago, Hikari said:

The Ripper didn't remove enough organs from the scenes to have been a body snatcher but maybe he was familiar with that business.

That seems unlikely, or at least unnecessary, assuming that the "body snatcher" business in the UK was anything like what existed in the US.

Here, the "resurrection men" (as they were also called) would dig up freshly buried corpses by digging a hole just big enough that the upper-body half of the coffin lid could be opened, pulling the corpse up through that opening, then restoring the grave's original appearance.  (When one cemetery in Indianapolis needed to be relocated in the early 20th century, it was found that the majority of the graves contained no bodies!)  The corpses would then be taken directly to a local medical school's dissection lab and sold.  This was, of course, illegal -- but there was at that time (circa 1900) absolutely no really legal way for med schools to obtain cadavers.

In short, a professional grave robber had absolutely no incentive to dissect the corpses, because that would have ruined their value to the med schools.

 

[Hikari]

3 minutes ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

That seems unlikely, or at least unnecessary, assuming that the "body snatcher" business in the UK was anything like what existed in the US.

Here, the "resurrection men" (as they were also called) would dig up freshly buried corpses by digging a hole just big enough that the upper-body half of the coffin lid could be opened, pulling the corpse up through that opening, then restoring the grave's original appearance.  (When one cemetery in Indianapolis needed to be relocated in the early 20th century, it was found that the majority of the graves contained no bodies!)  The corpses would then be taken directly to a local medical school's dissection lab and sold.  This was, of course, illegal -- but there was at that time (circa 1900) absolutely no really legal way for med schools to obtain cadavers.

In short, a professional grave robber had absolutely no incentive to dissect the corpses, because that would have ruined their value to the med schools.

 

By “business” I was referring to the whole underground dealing in body parts, not just exhumed corpses to be sold wholesale to medical colleges desperate for cadavers.  I said I did NOT assume the Ripper was doing  body snatching, but that he might have been familiar with this underground world due to work in a morgue.  Mssrs. Burke & Hare dealt body parts out of a wagon…the Ripper collected organs as trophies.  Presumably he didn’t eat them all.  Mostly he left everything arranged still-life style in situ.  The Ripper’s victims were fresh, but I could see how dealing in dead bodies as a profession, like in a morgue, would desensitize one to the human carcass.  There’d be lots of sharp blades around in a morgue.  A morgue seems a very likely place for a failed med student or disgraced doctor to end up, if he had a fetish for cutting up women.  Eventually he thought he’d try it in some still warm ones.  Not a very zany theory considering what he did to them.  

[Carol the Dabbler]

11 minutes ago, Hikari said:

A morgue seems a very likely place for a failed med student or disgraced doctor to end up, if he had a fetish for cutting up women.  Eventually he thought he’d try it in some still warm ones.  Not a very zany theory considering what he did to them.

Thank you for the clarification!

Yes, that does make sense.  I can even corroborate that very-general sort of thing happening:  The head of a dissection lab in Indianapolis in the early 20th century was perforce buying dug-up corpses from resurrection men.  But one day, a particularly rough fellow brought in a corpse that was still warm.  The good doctor make it quite clear that he should NOT do that again!  (So he presumably started letting his victims age a bit before trying to sell them.)

I knew this doctor in his later years.  He was an amazing fellow!

 

[HerlockSholmes]

Hikari/Carol,

One ‘Ripperologist’ (I’ve always hated that term) has a theory that the killer didn’t remove any body parts in situ and that the missing parts were actually stolen at the mortuary. He appears to stand alone with this theory although it seems that there was some kind of trade in body parts. We know that organs were taken from Chapman and Eddowes but not Nichols and Stride. The guy I mentioned disputes the Kelly murder. The doctor said that the heart was absent but he thinks that this meant absent from the body despite the fact that he lists all of the organs found in the room and there was no mention of the heart.

We don’t know exactly where the note was found and some reports mention a second note (to Valentine, the owner of the school’ but we have no more than that. Blackheath to Whitechapel is a fair distance (a walk of around 90 to 105 minutes I believe which could be done after a murder by a fit man but it’s not a walk that anyone was likely to have done for work purposes so I’ll certainly back up on my point about the season ticket)

There’s not often any Druitt-related discussion on the boards these days because, as you’ll understand, pretty much everything has been discussed numerous times but there has been a recent ‘find’ that has just been posted which was discovered by two excellent researchers called Roger Palmer and David Barrat. It’s from a column called Mustard and Cress which was written by the journalist George Sims. He regularly wrote about the case and was a friend of MacNaghten’s.

The Referee - Sunday 24 August 1913

MUSTARD AND CRESS

I have been reading with great interest Mrs Belloc Lowndes’s thrilling story of “The Lodger,” which is appearing in the Daily Telegraph. The story of “The Avenger” suggests the adventures of Jack the Ripper, and the reader, as he follows the narrative, finds himself wondering if “The Lodger” may not himself be the mysterious woman-killer who is being so diligently searched for by the police.
I am not going to make any comment on the remarkable sensation story the gifted authoress has founded on the mystery of the maniac who has been handed down to infamy as Jack the Ripper.

The Real Jack WAS a Lodger
during the whole of the time he was committing his crimes, and the house in which he lodged was in the neighbourhood of Blackheath. It was after his last maniacal murder in Miller’s –court that he disappeared from his lodgings. His body was found a month later in the Thames, and the probability is that he flung himself into the river a few hours after committing his last crime.
But it is not to revive the old controversy as to the identity of Jack that I am now referring to Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’s remarkable story. I refer to it because it has recalled to my memory a strange experience of my own. Somewhere among my papers I have an astounding document signed by the lady in whose house a man whom she firmly believed to be Jack had lodged. He had come to her house very much as the mysterious “Lodger” in the Telegraph serial comes to Mrs. Bunting. He was supposed to be a medical student. The odd thing about him was that he went out very little in the daytime, but frequently went out late at night, and always carried a small black bag.
He was rather a prepossessing-looking man, appeared to have plenty of money for his modest needs, and made himself agreeable to the members of the family. He made himself so agreeable that he landlady’s niece, who lived with her, did not feel annoyed when the lodger confessed that

He Was In Love With Her
The landlady’s husband was a foreigner. He was a professor of languages and held an official position at a public institution. When he heard that the lodger was paying attentions to his niece he was annoyed. “I didn’t like the man,” he said, “and we knew nothing of him beyond the fact that his reference was a doctor in whose house he had lodged before he came to us.” The professor was so annoyed that he ordered his niece to have nothing to do with the young man, and sent her away to a relation in the country. He also insisted upon his wife giving the lodger a fortnight’s notice. The lodger was annoyed and upset and received his dismissal with a bad brace.
That night the lodger went out soon after ten. The landlady saw him leave the house with his black bag. At three o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the noise of the front door closing. She struck a light and opened her bedroom door a little way and looked out. She saw the lodger coming up the stairs. He was in a state of great excitement, his face was marked with deep scratches, and he looked like a man who had been having an awful struggle with someone. “I’ve been attacked by thieves,” he said, when he saw the landlady looking at him. “Two men and a woman set about me in a dark corner of a street, and I had to run for my life.” Then he went to his bedroom.
About ten o’clock the next morning his landlady heard the lodger go to the bathroom, and she took that opportunity to go into her lodger’s bedroom and have a look round. He had lighted a fire himself, and on the hearth she saw

The Remains of Burnt Linen
The bag was on a chair by the side of the bed. She opened it, and in it she saw a long and curiously shaped knife.
The landlady was so alarmed that she went off at once to the institution at which her husband was engaged. On her way she caught sight of the newspaper placards. Two women had been found in the early hours of the morning murdered and mutilated in a way which left no doubt that the murderer was Jack the Ripper. She told the story of her discovery in the lodger’s room to the professor, who returned at once with her to the house to make a personal investigation before communicating with the police. When they reached the house the lodger had taken his belongings and had gone. He had left a fortnight’s rent, and a short note: “As I do not care to remain with you ‘under notice’ I have thought it better to leave at once.”
The professor hurried off to the police-station and told his story. Every search was made for the missing lodger, but without success, and shortly afterwards another murder was committed. Then came the last in Miller’s-court, and after that the information in the possession of Scotland Yard left very little doubt in the official mind as to

Who Jack Really Was
He committed suicide while the police were looking for him, and the finding of his body in the Thames put an end to all further official search for him. The real Jack was an insane doctor named D*****, who had been in a lunatic asylum and had escaped. He was a homicidal maniac whose friends, alarmed at his disappearance, had communicated with Scotland Yard and given a full description of him.
Several women in Whitechapel, of the class Jack selected his victims from, when shown the photograph the friends left with the police, declared that it was exactly like a man whom they had seen about in the neighbourhood on the nights the crimes had been committed. Two of them declared that he had spoken to them. The body of the man was found in the Thames a month after the murderer’s last crime. And the body had been a month in the water.
It was when these facts came to my knowledge that I put away the document the landlady of the mysterious lodger had left with me. I accepted, as everybody who knew the facts has accepted, the police theory that

Jack Had Been Identified,
and there was no useful purpose to be served in following up any other “clue.” The “revelation” made to me by the landlady who thought she had had Jack beneath her roof was brought vividly to my mind by the thrilling story of “The Lodger” in the Daily Telegraph

[Carol the Dabbler]

Spooky!  If that landlady came to the same conclusion as the reporter did, I wouldn't be surprised if she suddenly stopped taking in any new (male) boarders.

I'm increasingly curious about one thing, though -- if the officials did indeed think Druitt had been the Ripper, and believed that he had committed suicide in remorse, how did they explain the stones in his pockets?  Did they assume he was simply a very thorough sort of fellow who wanted to make sure he couldn't change his mind at the last moment?

Also, if Druitt was the mystery boarder, how could he have held down a teaching position if he went out only at night?

 

[Hikari]

Herl,

Very titillating account from the newspaper; thanks for sharing that.

If Montague was the Ripper, then his family seems to have been quite connected to keep his crimes and identity mostly quiet to the general public.  But if his family and some close associates had no difficulty believing him guilty of these horrific crimes because he was a 'homicidal maniac' who had escaped from a lunatic asylum, and besides which had medical training and kept being referred to as 'an insane doctor' . . the first he may have been, but demonstrably not the second . . how is it that an escaped lunatic continued with his work as a barrister and as a teacher and a respected member of a cricket club for how many months or years after supposedly escaping from the asylum until so very suddenly going off the rails again?  How does a lunatic wanted by the authorities for escaping from an institution present himself at the bar or as a sports coach for youth and successfully get hired for both of these respectable positions of some authority?  He was not practicing law or teaching under an assumed name, so I'd suppose that his mental health commitment would have caught up with him sooner or later as he tried to pursue these professions, if he had in fact gone AWOL from an asylum.  

We've observed before that a difference between the UK and the US is that in the UK, 100 miles is a really long way and to Americans, 100 years is a really long time.  I guess a walk on foot of an hour and a half or thereabouts is a considerable distance enough to be inconvenient and time consuming to have to do every day as a commute, but if the distance could be covered on foot in that amount of time between MD's two places of work, then I imagine a train might take perhaps 20 - 30 minutes with stops, making a rail pass a good investment.  A 30-minute commute by train is not outlandish at all, but we don't know how the train service would have been at the time.  Still, if a man could walk the distance in an hour and a bit at a brisk pace, that's close enough to have had regular trains coming and going, I should think.  

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

38 minutes ago, Hikari said:

I guess a walk on foot of an hour and a half or thereabouts is a considerable distance enough to be inconvenient and time consuming to have to do every day as a commute, but if the distance could be covered on foot in that amount of time between MD's two places of work, then I imagine a train might take perhaps 20 - 30 minutes with stops, making a rail pass a good investment.  A 30-minute commute by train is not outlandish at all, but we don't know how the train service would have been at the time.  Still, if a man could walk the distance in an hour and a bit at a brisk pace, that's close enough to have had regular trains coming and going, I should think.  

It also depends, of course, on whether the two ends of the journey are sufficiently close to rail stations.  In my handful of visits to the UK, there have been a couple of places that hubby and I wanted to go that were around an hour's walk from the nearest station, even though they were within large metropolitan areas (London and Liverpool).  In one case we did the walk, but in the other case we just said phooey on it.

 

[Hikari]

1 hour ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

It also depends, of course, on whether the two ends of the journey are sufficiently close to rail stations.  In my handful of visits to the UK, there have been a couple of places that hubby and I wanted to go that were around an hour's walk from the nearest station, even though they were within large metropolitan areas (London and Liverpool).  In one case we did the walk, but in the other case we just said phooey on it.

 

A round-trip walk of three hours would be too onerous to undertake every day as a commute, though it wouldn't be bad as a weekend ramble if one was prepared to walk that far.  With two jobs plus the cricket, MD didn't have that kind of time in his day.  But I thought Blackheath was a much further train journey away . . another county.  I just checked online.  Blackheath Station to Whitechapel is covered by the modern rail in approx. 41 minutes, listed at a distance of 8 miles.   There must be a lot of stops in between because the metro bus covers the distance in only 10 minutes more, still under an hour.  This is the modern transit and in Victorian days it would've taken longer, but presumably it's always been 8 miles between stations.  I remain curious as to what the terms of Druitt's employment at both locations were.  If he were only a very junior member of his chambers, he might not have had a very busy docket at all and been advised that he'd need a side gig to make a go of it.  But he had office space in chambers and also a room at his school.  Part-timers don't normally get offered accommodation, so he had kind of a sweet arrangement going at both places of employ.  If he were engaged as a PE teacher/coach at the school, perhaps he didn't have classes or coaching commitments all day every day.  Maybe he had a half-time berth at each place . .2 or 3 days at the school and the same amount in his chambers.  In American law firms, the junior associates are absolutely buried with work and routinely work 60 - 80 hour weeks in order to prove themselves.  They wind up doing all the scut work for the senior partners . .research, writing briefs, etc. even if they aren't yet qualified to take lead on their own cases.  A lot of them are studying for the bar exam in addition.  It's hard to imagine how MD found the time for everything attributed to him.  He is an intriguing individual for sure . . more interesting than some unwashed Jewish mental cases.  Who can say?

[Carol the Dabbler]

5 hours ago, Hikari said:

A round-trip walk of three hours would be too onerous to undertake every day as a commute, though it wouldn't be bad as a weekend ramble if one was prepared to walk that far.  With two jobs plus the cricket, MD didn't have that kind of time in his day.  But I thought Blackheath was a much further train journey away . . another county.  I just checked online.  Blackheath Station to Whitechapel is covered by the modern rail in approx. 41 minutes....

That's quicker, yes, and far less tiring.  But my point was that unless you live fairly near one station and work fairly near the other station, you could end up walking further just to get to/from the stations than if you'd simply walked in the first place.  In other words, it might be that neither alternative was any real help.  Since Druitt did have a ticket, though, it apparently worked for him.