Letters to the Editor

Published with his permission below is a message Lord Orsam received from Jonathan Hainsworth (JH) on 16th April 2023 (with pleasantries and chit chat removed) followed by subsequent email exchanges between them. Hainsworth's words are in purple, Lord Orsam's are in white.

JH to Lord Orsam, Sunday 16th April

I think you make a very strong case that the "Aberconway" version was composed first, and the filed version second. This is what we decided for the second book, but we do not agree that Anderson had anything to do with their composition - nor even knew of their existence. Also, whatever the order of their composition the 'draft' is the one Mac disseminated to the public via proxies.

Examining all the extant sources, Macnaghten appears to have lied to Griffiths about the status of the 'draft' document whose suspect contents he communicated to the Major. Yet Sims in his column of 1910 reveals he knows there were multiple versions of the so-called Home Office Report, and that the final version is agnostic between the likelihood of the three suspects.

The 1914 memoir chapter, "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper" functions as the de-facto third version of the memo revealing that there is only the [un-named] Druitt, and that there were two lines of information that reached Scotland Yard about him - or at least to Mac - several years apart; the first was minor and the second was definitive. The chapter is also, by implication, a damning refutation of Anderson's opinion of four years before (who is airbrushed out of existence in Mac's book).

Where I also disagree to some degree with your interpretation is that the filed version entirely tones down - for whatever reason - the earlier draft. It has always struck me the peculiar way he swapped places with the Druitt family between the versions, e.g. as to who was certain of Montague's guilt.

For whatever reason, in 1894, Macnaghten was determined to get it on file that Druitt was only some sort of medico but was definitely a man who gained erotic pleasure from violence, not alleged as earlier, and that the family believed in his dual identity as a serial killer, not suspected as earlier.

That's my two cents anyhow, maybe three : D

Lord Orsam to JH, Monday 17th April

I had rather thought that you might welcome the notion that Mac was forced by Anderson to upgrade Kosminski from a weak to strong suspect and thereby downplay Druitt, but evidently not.

I must admit it had escaped my mind - if it was ever in there - that you had changed your mind regarding the order of the drafts. I had checked your 'Case Closed' book to ascertain your views on the subject, but didn't think to also look in "Escape".

I've now taken a look at what you say in "Escape" but I feel that the idea that Mac even dreamt of breaking the chain of command and unilaterally submitting a report to the Home Secretary is a non-starter. I also can't make sense of why he would have willingly upgraded Kosminski to a strong suspect only to secretly believe that what he himself had written in the report was entirely wrong, preferring to use his "unofficial" draft in the future.

Looking at Sims' comments in 1910, if we assume that Macnaghten was the source for them, I really don't see how the description of "final official record" would have convinced anyone of anything if it was simply another way of referring to a report that he himself had written off his own bat and (secretly?) slipped onto the file reflecting his own personal views without any authorization or approval.

I'm sure that Anderson knew of and approved the report and I strongly suspect that Mac via Sims was directing his words to Anderson in 1910.

The way I see what Mac was saying (to Anderson) in 1910 (via Sims) is "Look Anderson, you're now saying that a Polish Jew was definitely Jack the Ripper but back in 1894 you approved my report to which you had personally contributed, which is thus now the "final official record", in which you gave equal weight to two other suspects, so that what you've just published about knowing it to be the Polish Jew is nonsense, isn't it?"

How can it be anything else? Why would Mac have referred to the filed version as the FINAL official record if he never for one second believed it was the final word on the subject of Jack the Ripper?

I mean, just think about it. You claim, I think, that Mac believed he solved the JTR case in 1891. If that's true, why in 1910 would he be referring to a report from 1894 as the final official report which suggested that Kosminski was an equally strong suspect as Druitt? My answer is because he was wanting to rub Anderson's nose in his own words which he never agreed with.

One could also point out the hypocrisy of Macnaghten saying in his 1914 memoir that JTR likely committed suicide and was never detained in an asylum even though the "final official record" said that it was possible that he had been. But the reason for the apparent hypocrisy is that Macnaghten never genuinely believed that the filed report was the final word and only described it as the final official record in 1910 (or rather told Sims to say this) as a way of getting at Anderson and his definite solution to the mystery.

No, for me, Anderson instructing Macnaghten to boost Kosminski at the detriment of [Druitt] makes perfect sense and it also makes sense of Sims taunting Anderson in 1910 to remind him of what HE had allowed to go in the "final official record".

I appreciate that your belief seems to be that Anderson never knew of Mac's report but I also find that impossible to accept. The rest of the argument in your book, I have to say, strikes me as convoluted and very hard to understand.

But I am happy to be convinced otherwise if you don't agree with what I've said in this email.

JH to Lord Orsam, Monday 17th April

The Melville Macnaghten I see, rightly or wrongly, is an affable, activist toff who considered breaking the chain of command in 1894, but did not go through with it as the Cutbush red herring never grew into the media/political debacle he feared. Nevertheless, in the Edwardian era he propagated to the public that the Home Office had this definitive document by the "Commissioner" (who? Mac's first SY nemesis, General Warren?).

Why would he have cause to fear? According to the totality of the primary sources we have - not much - what I argue is that Mac in 1891 learned from family members that the dead Druitt was The Ripper ("in all probability", e.g.for the sake of judicial decorum).

Mac placed nothing on file because he was trying to protect the reps of the Druitts and the Majendies, and after all the killer was safely deceased. In 1894, he realised this might have been a mistake, that he might be fired for a second time, and so he scrambled to get something on file if the truth spills out of Dorset due to a conscience-stricken vicar. He wanted a memo for the Home Office (or SY file where he put it) and one for the public. Sure, for the official file he appears to be saying that, hey, any one of these three would be more likely than Cutbush. Except that he has the Druitt family - whom any Victorian reader would assume is the distinguished family of the famous and late Dr. Robert Druitt - believing in their dead member's guilt. Why did they believe? Because M. J. Druitt was "sexually insane". Reportedly they know that aspect for a fact (Mac underlines was). How? Because he's Jack the Ripper, who gained pleasure from murdering and mutilating defenceless women. It's a circular bit of reasoning.

Mac was concealing that he alone knew this, nobody else at SY had any clue, and he was concealing that this was a suspect whose complicity only became clear some years later (e.g. after the Farquharson leak). Compare the memo(s) with the memoir and you can see the police chief's deceit; in 1894 he gives the entirely false impression that the family must have told the police of their suspicion/belief in 1888. That is certainly how Griffiths and Sims will shape the narrative from 1898. The super-efficient police knew about the 'drowned doctor' in 1888, and he was their chief suspect.The memoir carefully lifts the veil on all this boy's own misdirection.

I do not think that Anderson (and Swanson) knew anything about "Kosminski" until Mac told his loathed superior in 1895, to deflect him away from William Grant - whom Lawende had unexpectedly identified - and lied to his boss about the suspect being long deceased in the asylum (which is what Anderson then told Swanson and his own son). It was the masturbation aspect that was the clincher for Anderson, as Mac knew it would be (for all his upper class insularity he was unusually broad-minded about sexual 'deviance' due to his beloved days at Eton). In 1910, a puzzled Swanson asked Anderson in retirement about his memoir's Jewish suspect (solution?) and his crumbling but proud memory jumbled up Kosminski, Sadler, the Seaman's Home, and Lawende's identification of Grant. Swanson was so surprised by all this that he wrote the marginalia because otherwise he would forget as he had no personal memory of any such thing. Just look at the way Anderson conflated and mangled the account of pipes from different crime scenes in a 1908 interview, and gets all of it quite wrong. The running theme is always his big ego blaming others - a Jewish witness; a medical orderly - for wrecking the case. There's no substance to any of it.

I quite appreciate that you feel I am reading into the mundane sources a much more interesting story than they can actually sustain. Fair enough.

Lord Orsam to JH, Monday 18th April

I still don't find a clear explanation in your email of the changes between what you accept to be the draft version and the final official version.

Assuming that Mac thought he might secretly send his unapproved report directly to the Home Secretary - something which I don't accept for one second was a thought that would have flashed through his mind - please help me out and explain to me why he wrote in his draft report:

"Personally, & after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2."

But then, when writing the ACTUAL report which he wanted to send to the Home Secretary, and which he ended up placing on the file as the final official record, he deleted that sentence and instead added a new sentence in which he wrote of one of those two suspects who, remember, he had already exonerated after much careful and deliberate consideration:

"There were many circs connected with this man which made him a strong 'suspect'."

Either it doesn't say much for his careful and deliberate consideration or there was some sort of ludicrously convoluted thinking on his part (which is what I assume you are going to tell me) by which he is intending to tell the Home Secretary something which is completely wrong and then place that wrong report on the file as the official record even though he obviously didn't think that there were many circumstances connected with Kosminski which made him a strong suspect….. because he'd already exonerated him after giving the matter much careful and deliberate consideration!

Furthermore, instead of including the statement:

"I have always held strong opinions regarding no 1., and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become".

He deleted that entirely and instead wrote:

"I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders:-"

So, if I'm to understand what's going on here, I really need you tell me exactly what Mac was up to. I don’t think you've done so yet.

And then once you've given me whatever explanation you think explains this, could I ask you to step back and then address what I believe is such a clear and obvious solution to the puzzle which is that Mac was told by his immediate superior to change his report because his superior personally thought that Kosminski was just as likely to have committed the murders as Druitt and, indeed, that there were many circumstances which made him a "strong" suspect. Please tell me why this doesn't make perfect sense.

Like I said in my article, this also explains why Mac provided his own draft of the report to Griffiths and relied on it himself. He just didn't like what Anderson had done to his report. It seems to me like it's really, really, good for you because it would demonstrate that Mac never wavered in his belief that Druitt was the most likely suspect (and that Kosminski could be eliminated). I assume that's why you concluded in your first book that the Aberconway version was the later version because otherwise it didn't seem to make sense for your theory that Mac favoured Druitt.

And surely – despite whatever attraction you may have to your new theory – you must admit that it is so much more likely that Mac wasn't behaving as a loose cannon, writing a secret report about a series of murders which occurred before he even joined the Met Police of which he had no first-hand knowledge but that he had been deputed by Anderson to write a report for the Home Secretary about Cutbush, possibly over-stepping the mark by including a list of JTR suspects, and Anderson, once he realized this, stepped in to correct the errors in his draft report in the way that one routinely would expect from a senior person in any organisation, especially considering that a report to the Home Secretary from Scotland Yard about a criminal matter would have had to have come directly from the Assistant Commissioner in the usual way, no question about it. There was no other possible route of transmission!

JH to Lord Orsam, Tuesday 18th April

No worries, I will try again.

In 1894, Macnaghten felt suddenly under pressure from the possibility that Vicar Charles Druitt would go public in order to exonerate the [unnamed] Thomas Cutbush.

Macnaghten knew that Druitt had come to police attention in 1888, which was not his fault, and then he himself had learned the whole truth in 1891 and told nobody at the Yard - which was his fault.

Therefore the official version must fudge the truth; it must appear to show that whilst Druitt was on police radar there was no hard evidence against him whilst he was alive. He was just one of three possible and promising maniacs, and thus not the fault of the SY that he was not arrested and charged. There was no police cover-up as alleged by "The Sun" to protect a good family - which there had been, though just by one senior police chief and it was a different family.

On the other hand, Mac tries to have it both ways by pumping up the family's suspicion and allegation to a fact and a belief. This is to show that SY was aware - which it was not and could not have been in 1888, as it did not have the family input until "some years after" - that Druitt was Jack the Ripper according to his "good family". He had fused the two streams of intelligence about this solution into one, and it is very awkward.

There is no way Anderson would have signed off on any of this because he would have seen through the school-boyish dodge about the two streams of information being fused as one, the second of which had been with-held from him by his 'unqualified, nerves-of-jelly' subordinate.

The Macnaghten Memos are an attempt to try and protect himself against having learned, alone and privately, the truth "some years after" and not sharing it with the Yard. As a Tory holdover he was preparing for an avalanche of criticism from a Liberal government if the whole story came out in 1894, and likely a second sacking. At the same time the draft was ready for the media via literary pals. It also fudged the two lines of information into one, but implied the Druitts in question were not the Dr. Robert Druitt clan ("fairly good family") and tried to get the Druitts and the Yard off the hook; by saying it was only suspicions and allegations from the family. Yet Mac's investigation had exonerated the Russian and the Hebrew, and concluded it was the middle-aged, English surgeon, though the incriminating knife remained, unfortunately, at the bottom of the Thames. Macnaghten added "Kosminski" and "Doctor" Ostrog as window-dressing, because if you just have Druitt you give the game away that Cutbush was not the fiend but Druitt, if he is the only other suspect mentioned, must have been - then why was he not arrested? The truth was, he had been arrested and released as Mac's successor, Basil Thompson would arguably reveal in the American version of his history of the police in the 1930's.

As it was Mac never pulled either trigger in 1894 as it turned out not to be needed. With the Vicar's on schedule outing in 1899, however, Mac got in first with the draft version and Sims then dismissed the cleric's claims.

That's my interpretation of the scrappy and contradictory sources, the critical one being "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper".

Lord Orsam to JH, Tuesday 19th April

Thank you for taking the time to set out your theory in full for me.

I don't think, however, that you've quite addressed the points I raised in my email. I hope you don't mind me setting them out below.

Firstly, I fail to understand why Mac needed to describe Kosminski as a "strong suspect" when he was only included as "window dressing". While I can sort of understand why you might say that Mac didn't want to claim that Kosminski had been exonerated, I just can't work out why he didn't simply say that any of the 3 suspects could have been JTR and leave it at that. This would have obscured the failure to arrest Druitt in 1888. Why upgrade Kosminski to a "strong" suspect and inform the Home Secretary of the "many circumstances" which made him a strong suspect? I mean, what if the Home Secretary had written back to ask Mac what those strong (but non-existent) circumstances were? What would he have done then?

Secondly, your theory, in my view, makes no sense of Mac, via Sims, describing his report as the "final official record". In your theory, there is nothing "final" or "official" about it (and btw I think you've misunderstood "final" which IMO was conveying the meaning of "the final word" not "the final draft"). On the contrary, according to you, it's an unauthorized and unapproved document recording Mac's own personal beliefs which he had secretly slipped onto the police file. In no way could it be described as official and in no way could it possibly contradict Anderson's belief that JTR was a Polish Jew. On the contrary, if anything, it supports Anderson because, even though it it doesn't say he was definitely the killer, it's still a report in which Kosminski is described as a "strong" suspect. But, as Anderson had supposedly never seen it let alone approved it, what purpose was there in Mac publicly referring to it? Anderson could simply have responded by saying that he knew nothing about such a report which, even if he had seen it before he retired, he could dismiss as unfounded speculation by someone who had no first-hand knowledge of the case and which had never been checked by anyone else at Scotland Yard, nowhere near a final official report.

Thirdly, I don't feel your theory gets to grips with the differences between the Aberconway version and the filed version. As I understand what you are saying, the Aberconway version was the report which reflected Mac's own true beliefs which he was always planning to circulate to Griffiths (and others?) whereas the filed version was the one he toned down with regard to suspects to ensure that the Home Secretary didn't question why Druitt hadn't been arrested in 1888. But there were many more changes between the two versions than that, as I described in my article. The number of changes is indicative of the Aberconway version being a draft which has been heavily amended before being finalized. Not only have a number of mistakes been corrected but there have been many stylistic changes too. What could possibly have been going through Mac's mind to make all those stylistic changes if all he wanted to do was hide from the Home Secretary the fact that there was only one prime suspect? I'm sorry, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

A few other things that don't make sense to me:

1. In 1894 you say that Mac was "under pressure" that Vicar Druitt would go public, yet, despite this, remained completely silent in terms of public comment whereas, in 1898, he pre-empted Druitt by a whole year because he knew he would go public in 1899 for some incomprehensible reason, making it impossible for me to understand why he didn't pre-empt him in 1894. How could he have known that Vicar Druitt (who wasn't even a north country vicar) wouldn't go public in March 1894, for example? Why did he also even need to pre-empt him if the vicar was going to be telling the same story disguised as to identity? And, I might ask, why did Sims need to rubbish that same story?

2. I don't understand what is meant by Mac fearing a "second sacking". When was his first?

3. While I could sort of understand that Mac might have wanted to put on the file a record of the private information he had received, in order to avoid criticism for keeping it to himself, he didn't actually do this in terms of the details, so that he surely WOULD have been criticised for withholding the details of the private information from Anderson and others at Scotland Yard, making his report an admission of an offence. The idea that by secretly having placed this note on file it would have exonerated him strikes me as absurd. Moreover, you are saying that he actually intended to inform the Home Secretary of the existence of that private information (as opposed to the details). Do you think that having provided such a memo to the Home Secretary he could then have reasonably hoped to have kept that memo secret from Anderson and/or the Commissioner? That makes no sense to me.

4. I also can't get my head around why Mac needed to hide from the Home Secretary that there was evidence against Druitt while he was alive. What did he care? He wasn't employed by the Met Police at that time.

As for my own theory, I don’t think it's been given a fair crack of the whip. It seems that the answer to my question as to why it doesn't make perfect sense for Anderson to have been responsible for the changes between the Aberconway version and the filed version is that there is no way Anderson would have signed off on the report because he would have "seen through the school-boyish dodge about the two streams of information being fused as one". You will appreciate, however, that I don't accept that there is any such dodge because I don't accept that your speculation is well founded, not seeing any reason to think that the police knew about Druitt while he was alive nor any reason to believe that Anderson wouldn't have known of Mac's "private information". While it would seem that we are two worlds apart – living in somewhat parallel universes – are you at least able to hypothetically follow my line of thinking that what appears on the face of things to be true is true, whereby the police had no knowledge of Druitt in 1888 and only later discovered that he was, as Mac says, suspected by his own family of being the Ripper? In that scenario, are you willing to admit that it would make perfect sense for Anderson, when reading Mac's draft, to have been unhappy with Mac's conclusion that Kosminski could be exonerated, bearing in mind his later comments that he thought the Polish Jew was definitely the Ripper?

Can you also not acknowledge that the normal and expected procedure within Scotland Yard would have been for Anderson to have approved Mac's report before it could either be sent to the Home Secretary or placed on the file?

Regarding Sir Basil Thomson, incidentally, I would cite and rely on the authors of a 2015 book about Druitt in which I find it stated: "Sir Basil Thomson’s rewrite [of Griffiths] shows that he had no insider knowledge to offer on the Dorset solution and, as with all his Scotland Yard colleagues, had not been taken into “Good Old Mac’s” confidence about Druitt". Whoever wrote that got it spot on! Thomson's book, parroting Griffiths, cannot possibly be taken as support that the police knew anything of Druitt in 1888.

It may be that we can never understand each other because you seem utterly convinced of what you speculate to have been in Mac's mind whereas I just think about what seems to be obvious on the face it, namely that the Chief Constable wrote an authorized report in response to the Sun's articles about Cutbush, the Assistant Commissioner instructed him to make some changes and the report was then placed on the file in case it was needed. A few years later the Chief Constable provided his retained and preferred copy of the earlier draft to a crime writer who repeated some of it. I like this because it doesn't require any convoluted thinking. I can't tell you that your convoluted thinking is wrong, just that, if you're doing it without any solid evidence, you surely need to be open to the possibility of not just being wrong, but very, very, wrong.

Where I do agree with you, however, is that Mac was refuting Anderson in 1914…. just as he had wanted to do, but had been unable to do, in 1894!

JH to Lord Orsam, Wednesday 19th April

I really appreciate you trying to understand the nuts and bolts of my interpretation, though not agree with it, of course, just understand it. and to expose its illogical foundations as you see it.

That was clever; quoting me against myself.

I'll try again from a different angle:

The Vicar, we think Charles' brother-in-law, Arthur Du Boulay Hill, was in the north by the time he sent the story to "The Daily Mail" as a proxy. It is possible by then, and only by then, that Charles had been convinced to do it as Mac did; as "substantial truth under fictitious form". In 1894, Charles may have been threatening to go public and Macnaghten had to talk him out of it. Part of what Montague had told Charles was that the truth must come out, no later than in ten years - hence the deadline. Also, it was not a whole year as Griffiths' book came out in December 1898, and the anniversary of Montie's death was the very next month. Macnaghten, rightly or wrongly, believed that the story would cause a sensation and he wanted to propagate the view that the police knew all about the un-named Druitt and were about to arrest him, but he had killed himself. This was a lie; they had arrested Druitt in 1888 and let him go. Mac wanted that concealed, and it was. The paragraph in Griffiths' intro did cause a media flap, whereas the "confession" story could not get published. Then came Sims to say - out of the blue if you had been following Sims' previous crucifixion of the cops - that the Vicar's story, which he distorts, is rubbish as the police were on top of the whole situation.

2. I don't understand what is meant by Mac fearing a "second sacking". When was his first?

Sorry, I put that too literally - though not from Mac's pov. His Indian patron, Monro had promised him his own newly created position of Assistant Chief Constable (CID) in 1888 and Warren had agreed before he decided he did not. Gallingly for Mac, his being accepted and rejected leaked to the press. It was so painful that in his memoir, Mac lies about why he did join the Met until the following year. In that same memoir he kicks Warren, repeating without qualification the Leftist denunciation of the general as the villian of Bloody Sunday. It left Mac hypersensitive and insecure at work, at least until he became Assistant Commissioner in 1903. And, he had to work under a conceited, pious, humourless recluse who detested him.

To some extent I agree, except that he did not send it to the Home Office. I think that you are expecting a level of behaviour from human beings that will always be rational and always make sense, especially people who are under acute pressure and trying to stay a step ahead of the game . To me, rightly or wrongly, it is not at all absurd that Macnaghten tried to come up with a bureaucratic dodge to get on file what he had learned in 1891, e.g. that Druitt was The Ripper, albeit safely deceased. He wrote the memos for different audiences, and then used one for public relations purposes four years later. Any reading of the filed version, outside of today's "Ripperologists" and starting with Robin Odell in 1966 who first published the suspects section, who assert that the entire document is much more moderate and dispassionate, is just not true about what he writes about Druitt and his family. We are so used to denigrating Mac as a source that we cannot see how extraordinary that amplification of Druitt really is - any objective reader would be saying, Huh? What? He was a sexual maniac and a family of the [so-called] better classes believed in his guilt?! In fact, within Stephen Knight's truly absurd 'theory' of 1976 is that he is the only published writer before myself who noticed this discrepancy (of course he then claimed the memos must be written by different conspiratorial hands).

No, he was trying to conceal that Druitt only became the definitive solution long after 1888, when several murders had been wrongly attributed to the same killer. He thought if the the whole story came out in 1894, it would include his own role as orchestrator of the family cover-up after 1891. He perhaps thought there was nothing he could do to save his job and reputation if that happened, but he tried. Instead events mostly out of control his one-man cover-up held.

Macnaghten would never have handed Anderson the Druitt name - if it could be absolutely avoided - as he did not trust his boss to be discreet. Sure enough, when he finally told Anderson about "Kosminski" in 1895, the first time I think Anderson had ever heard of the Polish suspect, he began telling people about how the killer was likely a lunatic in an asylum. For the official version, Mac had to write that "Kosminski" was a strong suspect because if he was weak what is he doing there? As in, here are three stronger suspects than Cutbush - one of whom was believed by his family to be the killer as he was sexually insane. This is the ur-version of the much better tale of the "friends" who are frantically trying to find the "doctor" as they know about his diagnosis as a voluntary patient in two asylums. But, according to Sims, the police already know this too, and their efficient net is fast closing but.... a minute too late. We see this melodramatic cliche played out in the climax of Guy Logan's penny dreadful; the police waiting at either end of the bridge as the Sherlock/Mac figure battles with the Moriarty/Druitt figure, and both are killed by a bolt of lightning (sorry David, but I never agreed with you that my overall interpretation of that source was wrong : )

Consider that in his big 1907 piece, Sims repeats the notion that the un-named "Kosminski" was a very strong suspect, except that the incriminating reasons given are new and fictitious: masturbation is out and working in a Polish hospital and living alone in Whitechapel are in - see below:

My addition to the Evans/Rumbelow theory of the Seaman's Home being the origin of the Seaside Home is that Anderson read this article by Sims and thought to himself, correctly, it was not a policeman who saw a young man with Eddowes, but a Jewish witness, Lawende, who said no (Sadler) and yes (Grant) the latter a sailor. His failing memory did the rest and passed it onto Swanson.

The first man was a Polish Jew of curious habits and strange disposition, who was the sole occupant of certain premises in Whitechapel after night-fall. This man was in the district during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders, and soon after they ceased certain facts came to light which showed that it was quite possible that he might have been the Ripper. He had at one time been employed in a hospital in Poland. He was known to be a lunatic at the time of the murders, and some-time afterwards he betrayed such undoubted signs of homicidal mania that he was sent to a lunatic asylum.

The policeman who got a glimpse of Jack in Mitre Court said, when some time afterwards he saw the Pole, that he was the height and build of the man he had seen on the night of the murder.

Lord Orsam to JH, Wednesday 19th April

I'm learning things all the time in this exchange... like how Macnaghten was in control of the publishing deadlines of Cassell & Co, being able to ensure that Major Griffiths' book was proofed and published before the date of the agreed big reveal in mid-January 1899 by Arthur de Boulay Hill on behalf of Vicar Druitt, the good vicar who was so honest and trustworthy that Macnaghten panicked in 1894, thinking he was going to renege on the agreement and reveal the whole story in the press. Or at least, a story about a surgeon who had confessed to being Jack the Ripper which would have been so damaging to Macnaghten because……well I haven't worked that bit out yet, nor have I worked out why Macnaghten would have thought that Vicar Druitt, having apparently wanted in 1891 to wait exactly ten years since the discovery of Montague's body before telling the story, or allowing Arthur to tell it, in the interests of his family, might have rashly done it in 1894, against his family interests. It's also good to have it confirmed that Vicar Arthur de Boulay Hill was happy to lie to the press about having taken the confession directly, which makes me wonder about his credibility, but I suppose he was working to a higher purpose.

I guess I will die wondering why Macnaghten via Sims wanted to rubbish the vicar's story which was, to all intents and purposes, the same story about how Druitt was JTR but God does move in mysterious ways and Macnaghten seems to do the same.

Regarding my questions about your theory, I'm afraid you haven't properly answered the key one about Kosminski. You tell me that Mac 'had to write that "Kosminski" was a strong suspect because if he was weak what is he doing in there?' But the deletion of the preamble about Kosminski (and Ostrog) having been exonerated would have been entirely sufficient for Mac's purpose because that is the only indication in the Aberconway version that Kosminski was a weak suspect. Look at what he wrote in the Aberconway version:

"Kosminski, a Polish Jew, who lived in the very heart of the district where the murders were committed. He had become insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, with strong homicidal tendencies. He was (and I believe still is) detained in a lunatic asylum, about March 1889. This man in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City P.C. near Mitre Square."

Nothing in that entry indicates that Kosminski was a weak suspect which would have led the Home Secretary to think that the police should have focused on Druitt. On the contrary, Kosminksi "strongly resembled" the individual seen near Mitre Square. It's only the now-deleted preamble that downgraded him to a weak "exonerated" suspect. Which brings us back to my original question: Why did Mac need to amend his Aberconway draft to stress that out of the three men Kosminski alone was a "strong suspect" and say that there were "many circumstances" which made him a strong suspect? Under your theory, I suggest it makes no sense at all. Whereas under my theory it makes perfect sense.

You also didn't respond at all to my question as to the many stylistic changes to the report from the Aberconway draft. Why oh why did he do it? Under your theory I suggest there is no answer, which is no doubt why you haven't answered it. Under my theory it makes perfect sense.

While I'm aware that Mac didn’t in the end send his report to the Home Office (despite Sims in 1907 saying he did), I understand your theory to be that this is what he was intending to do when he wrote it. That's why I can't understand why he would have wanted to inform the Home Office about the private information that he hadn't even mentioned to anyone in Scotland Yard. I appreciate your response that people are not always rational but I think it must be a red flag to your theory.

In your email from Tuesday you told me that the official report "must appear to show that whilst Druitt was on police radar there was no hard evidence against him while he was alive…and not the fault of the SY that he was not arrested and charged". But when I asked you why Mac cared about this, you denied that his report needed to show it, telling me that he was only "trying to conceal that Druitt only became the definitive solution long after 1888". As to that, I repeat that I can't see how it then helps Mac to inform the Home Secretary (as he was intending to) about the private information he had received which is surely going to reveal that he had, at some point after June 1889, received private information from the Druitt family that their relative was JTR, thus actually exposing the fact that Druitt likely became the definitive solution long after 1888! And how was he - someone afraid of being sacked - hoping to keep this a secret from Anderson? Makes no sense to me.

Then you haven't responded to my point about Sims saying that Mac's report was the final official record which simply wouldn’t apply to a unauthorized and unapproved memo he had secretly slipped onto the file.

What perhaps most amazes me about your theory is that it means that if Anderson, or anyone else at Scotland Yard, had written the memo in Feb 1894 he would only have been able to list one alternative suspect to Cutbush, namely: Ostrog. For some unknown and frankly unexplained reason, Macnaghten was the repository of all information about both Kosminski and Druitt within Scotland Yard in 1894. That strikes me as highly unlikely.

I don't understand the significance or relevance of you citing Sims from 1907 but to say that he repeated the notion that Kosminski was "a very strong suspect" is literally the opposite of the truth because, in a passage you omitted to quote, he stated of both Kosminski and Ostrog that, "there is one thing that makes the case against each of them weak". So he literally called Kosminski a weak suspect. He tells us that the "probability" was that the Ripper committed suicide thus pointing to Druitt only.

Finally, I still don't think my own theory, of which you repeatedly avoid any mention, has been given a fair crack of the whip in this discussion. Amusingly, when I look at your Escape book, I find you saying that, "the draft version, composed for the public, contained a deception that even Anderson might spot: the beat cop....". That's exactly what I've been saying (although I call it an error). Anderson did spot it! He deleted it. Let me try this: If you are wrong about your theory, isn't mine the obvious rational alternative?

NEW FRONT

re. SAGAR

JH to Lord Orsam, Wednesday 19 April

Here are my two cents.

Macnaghten started this myth of the gentile constable who encounters a Jewish suspect. He did this by consciously transposing the ethnicities of the witness and the suspect of Mitre Court in the draft version.

Therefore, this bit of fact-into-fiction evolves from Mac to Griffiths and Sims towards what Sagar seems to have said.

In Sims' 1907 piece he cements this bit of misdirection:

One man only, a policeman, saw him leaving the place in which he had just accomplished a fiendish deed, but failed, owing to the darkness, to get a good view of him. A little later the policeman stumbled over the lifeless body of the victim.

This is also in Mac's 1914 memoir, though he restores the truth of the encounter as happening before the murder, ala Lawende's sighting:

This woman's body, very badly mutilated, was found in a dark corner of Mitre Square. On this occasion it is probable that the police officer on duty in the vicinity saw the murderer with his victim a few minutes before, but no satisfactory description was forthcoming.

We argued in our book that Mac told each person what they wanted to hear, in this case that the Butcher's Gate suspect that Sagar had pursued was likely the fiend. It has Mac's fingerprints all over it: a suspect who is supposedly deceased (here in Australia no less) and whose removal meant that the murders ended. That's Mac's 'autumn of terror' paradigm which, incredibly, still dominates the thinking of researchers into this subject. Such a timeline was true neither of Druitt (dead too soon) or Aaron Kosminski (incarcerated too soon) but it certainly made the police look better, e.g. they knew when Mary Jane Kelly was found that this was the final murder - which is demonstrably false, even silly, as Mac admitted in 1914. "Kosminski" was not deceased until 1919; G. Wentworth Bell had not drowned in the Thames; William Grant had not died in prison; Dr Tumblety had not killed himself in France; and whomever Macnaghten was misleading Tom Divall about had probably not gone to the States and then died in an asylum there either. Only Druitt was deceased and a suicide, but his fate has been grafted onto the others to keep them all sweet.

Sorry to have to bring up Logan again, but this hack, backed by Sims I think, actually has it correct: a Jewish witness who sees the gentile gent Mortemer Slade with Eddowes before the murder (Slade is wearing a false beard thus appearing to be even more of a Sims lookalike).

Here are my two cents.

Sims in 1907 once more:

I present the portrait as one put forward by a man who had every reason to believe that he had seen and conversed with Jack the Ripper, as the "double" of the Whitechapel Terror. Various witnesses who had seen a man conversing with a woman who was soon afterwards found murdered said that he was a well-dressed man with a black moustache. Others described him as a man with a closely-trimmed beard.

Lord Orsam to JH, 19 April

The thing that really struck me in your email was this:

"It has Mac's fingerprints all over it"

Are you sure you don't mean it has the fingerprints of the person who, in your imagination, you think Mac was?

I'm frankly at a loss to understand why Mac is even relevant to a story being told by a City of London police detective from his personal knowledge of events.

I'm also bound to say that you are mistaken in your summary of Logan's book. No Jewish witness sees Mortemer Slade with Eddowes before the murder.

Perhaps you are thinking of the way that, after describing the murders committed by the fictional Slade, Logan then summarizes the factual and actual inquest evidence when he writes that:

"Shortly after 1.30 a man and woman were seen talking at the corner of Church Passage by some gentlemen leaving the Imperial Club in Duke Street, one of whom stated his opinion that the clothing he had seen was like that worn by the woman he saw."

Nowhere does Logan tell his readers that the gentlemen leaving the club were Jewish and nowhere does he confirm that the woman was Eddowes or that the man talking to her was Slade. Logan himself didn't know if this man was Jack the Ripper so he obviously didn't want to say the man was Slade.

I don't know what the significance is of the false beard, even if resembling Sims, but I can assure you that Guy Logan is the reddest of red herrings for you in respect of Druitt and simply not worth you continuing with.

JH to Lord Orsam, Thursday 20 April

I read your replies and I think: No, no, no - how can you not see what is in front of you and that your Anderson theory is weak to the point of tepid, as it has so many loose ends???

No, I'm afraid your alternative makes no sense to me at all. This is because Anderson and then Swanson think that "Kosminski" (no other name, just like Mac wrote it) is deceased, yet Macnaghten, in 1894 and 1907 knows this is not true.

Yet I know how you feel about your counter-points being ignored - as mine are too; e.g. the change in the Druitt's family certainty about their M. J. ... I cannot get any response from you about this element.

You have my empathy as I keep pointing out that only Druitt was dead and a suicide, and yet the other bods with their not-dead suspects have been misled. I wonder by whom? No response from you about any of that either.

As for Sagar he is repeating a cliche that starts with Macnaghten and is simply not true: there was no p.c. who saw a suspicious man of Jewish appearance leaving a murder scene and then coming across the mutilated victim. Sagar is wrong. But why is he wrong? Could he have been misled one evening by the upper class yet super-friendly Assistant Commissioner who loves to go out at night with the detectives, as if he is one of them? Was Mac reminiscing about his favourite case, the one he could have solved if he had been there in 1888, and who was always seeking to airbrush out of existence the Jewish Lawende's sighting of a gentile-featured, young man with a fair moustache?

Also in the 1907 piece, the reason that Sims gives for the Polish Jew to be not a strong suspect after all is quite spurious, in fact a lie to be blunt: the killer had to destroy himself within minutes of Millers Ct. or be immediately sectioned. According to Sims, the maniac could not live on for even "a single day" and the police supposedly agree with all this (except another minority faction who think it was an American medical student). Since the Pole and the Russian lived on for a long time afterwards ipso facto they cannot be the killer. In his 1914 memoirs, however, Mac rows this back by having [the un-named] Druitt compos enough to exit Whitechapel after Kelly's murder and to live on for at least ... a single day - perhaps it was two, or even longer. For the first time the handy fiction set up by MP Farquarson in 1891 to disguise Montague's verbal confession as a confession-in-action by his instant, remorseful suicide is revealed to be untrue (in the same memoir, Mac even chummily quotes a large piece from Sims to indicate that the error of the timing of Jack's suicide begins with his pal and not with himself).

Ahhhhhh Logan. I'll never forget the joy of when I first read it. Unexpected and extraordinary confirmation of my theory - more substantial truth in even more fictitious form.

I will give you half a tick that I have extrapolated a little too much about the witness seeing the suspect, since Slade is a gentile and a gentleman and an Englishman, and that is still the only reference for a very long time to this fact from the historical record, but fair point the said witness is not identified as Jewish.

On the other hand, checking Logan again I found a quote I had missed which matches the English patient in the French asylum:

"... and saw himself, an inmate for life of the criminal lunatic asylum, re-enacting again and yet again the slaughter of those fallen women."

So, you know, thanks for that : )

Jan Bondeson who found the 1905 serial does not agree that Druitt is a strong suspect; he regurgitates the discredited paradigm of an under-informed Macnaghten. However he does agree with me that - obviously - Logan is reworking Sims, and behind him Mac: "Logan had adhered to what can be termed the Macnaghten version of events, as originally outlined [by] Major Griffiths ... it is safe to presume that the plot ... owes much to George R. Sims ... [Logan] still adheres to what he believed to be the accepted basic facts ... as presented by George R. Sims."

Your attempt to deny the obvious in "A Bridge Too Far" (great title!) was heroic but hopeless, because you were resisting common sense. Interesting piece, though, which I gave a link to my readers in the second book (over the objections, I might add, of my publisher) knowing they would agree with me and not with you. It is you who earns the title of The Mental Gymnast : )

Now, what for the future?

Our problem is that you and I see each other in a reverse mirror image: I think you cannot see the forest for the trees, and you think I see forests where there is only a desert.

Each thinks of the other: how can such an intelligent, handsome and youthful man not agree with me??

The real problem is logistics: the medium of email is cumbersome and the time-zone difference makes our debate even more laborious. There are moments when I know you want to jump in and go: hold on, what about ... and I feel exactly the same.

Lord Orsam to JH, Thursday 20 April

For each of my last two replies I considered simply writing that we are obviously not going to agree and that perhaps we should leave it there - certainly I don't care if you want to stick to your beliefs about Macnaghten until the end of time - but, as I'll be including our exchange in full in the next update of my website (only removing the pleasantries, chit chat and personal info), I thought I should take the discussion as far as it is able to go in case others are interested to read what we both have to say. I get the impression you are tired of the back and forth, which is fair enough, the topic is quite exhausting, so I won't ask you any questions in this email and will merely respond to all the points you've raised, doing it line by line because you have suggested that I've avoided some issues (which is not the case - but I don't always follow your lines of argument and can't see the relevance of a lot of stuff to what is, in my opinion, a very short, narrow point about the two versions of Mac's memoranda, and you didn't actually ask me any questions that I could be said to have avoided). Whether you want to continue to try and narrow down any issues, or not do so, is fine by me but I don't feel we are going to agree on anything because, like I said, we seem to be operating in two parallel universes.

I'm bound to say that you still haven't answered my key question about why Kosminski moves from being exonerated to being a strong suspect in the two memos. It's just not explained. All you've done, in fact, is remind me of another point in favour of my theory because, in the Aberconway version, it's stated that Kosminski "was (and I believe still is) detained in a lunatic asylum" but this is then deleted from the filed version. Your theory doesn't explain this. My theory can explain it on the basis that Anderson was under the impression (as Swanson appeared to have been) that Kosminski died shortly after being detained in the lunatic asylum. At the very least, it indicates uncertainty on the point. I don't think you can explain why Mac felt the need to remove it from the final version, just like you haven't even attempted to explain the point on which I've already pressed you twice about all the stylistic changes which surely demonstrate at the very least that the Aberconway version was a draft and that the filed version was the amended, improved version but, as the amendments don't really make sense for Mac to have done them, point heavily towards Anderson as being their author.

I've certainly noticed you mentioning something like this but the picture you would have seen in my head each time, had you been able to look inside, would have been "??????????".

I assume that what you are referring to is the below from one of your earlier emails and where it is most fully articulated:

"He wanted a memo for the Home Office (or SY file where he put it) and one for the public. Sure, for the official file he appears to be saying that, hey, any one of these three would be more likely than Cutbush. Except that he has the Druitt family - whom any Victorian reader would assume is the distinguished family of the famous and late Dr. Robert Druitt - believing in their dead member's guilt. Why did they believe? Because M. J. Druitt was "sexually insane". Reportedly they know that aspect for a fact (Mac underlines was). How? Because he's Jack the Ripper, who gained pleasure from murdering and mutilating defenceless women. It's a circular bit of reasoning."

As I read these words, you appear to be saying that there is some difference between the Aberconway version and the filed version on this point.

Well, the Aberconway version says:

From private information I have little doubt but that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was sexually insane.

The final version says:

He was sexually insane and from private info.. I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.

I'm having great difficulty in seeing the significance for you in the difference between the two versions. The word "alleged" has been removed and it's been firmed up that he was sexually insane (IMO Anderson could have had stronger views on this) but everything else is essentially the same. "suspected" is changed to "believed" but I can't see what difference that makes. It's just the same. So I fail to see what kind of "response" you wanted from me about this element.

I really don't know what this means. I agree that, of the three men, only Druitt was stated to be dead and a suicide but I can't fathom the point that "the other bods with their not-dead suspects have been misled". I don't know how they have been misled or what this means. I'm not even sure what part of your emails you are referring to. This explains why there has been no response from me. I just don't know what you are talking about here.

I agree that it's interesting that the story of a PC having seen a man near Mitre Square links both the Macnaghten and the Sagar stories. But, in the absence of any evidential connection of these assumed nightly meetings between Macnaghten and Sagar (or, indeed, any other City of London detective), I would be very reluctant to conclude that Sagar had somehow been brainwashed by Mac into thinking that such a thing had actually occurred. If the story was a myth then I suggest it was a myth that had permeated throughout the police of both forces. In my article, however, you may recall that I do keep open the possibility that some sort of sighting by a PC existed. I'm always conscious that we don't necessarily know everything, especially in the absence of City of London files, and that an inquest does not always reveal every fact. I'm at a loss to understand your claim that Mac was "always" seeking to airbrush out of existence the Jewish Lawende's sighting of a gentile-featured, young man with a fair moustache. Sure, Lawende's sighting isn't mentioned in his memo, and, if he was using the Aberconway version as the basis for what he wrote in his book, that explains why it's not mentioned there either. I would also argue that the fact that there is no mention of the PC in the final filed version again supports my theory that Anderson deleted it.

As for Lawende's sighting of a "young man with a fair moustache", I assume you mean the man who was said in the same document from which you are citing to have "looked like a sailor". I don't think this would have suggested Druitt to anyone.

Also in the 1907 piece, the reason that Sims gives for the Polish Jew to be not a strong suspect after all is quite spurious, in fact a lie to be blunt: the killer had to destroy himself within minutes of Millers Ct. or be immediately sectioned. According to Sims, the maniac could not live on for even "a single day" and the police supposedly agree with all this (except another minority faction who think it was an American medical student). Since the Pole and the Russian lived on for a long time afterwards ipso facto they cannot be the killer. In his 1914 memoirs, however, Mac rows this back by having [the un-named] Druitt compos enough to exit Whitechapel after Kelly's murder and to live on for at least ... a single day - perhaps it was two, or even longer. For the first time the handy fiction set up by MP Farquarson in 1891 to disguise Montague's verbal conefession as a confession-in-action by his instant, remorseful suicide is revealed to be untrue (in the same memoir, Mac even chummily quotes a large piece from Sims to indicate that the error of the timing of Jack's suicide begins with his pal and not with himself).

You introduced the 1907 piece into this discussion and I thought you did so by way of showing me that Sims was saying that the Polish Jew WAS a strong suspect (not that this would have been of any relevance) but now you want to discuss the reason for him NOT being a strong suspect! If Sims was putting forward bad arguments in 1907, 13 years after the memorandum that we are supposed to be discussing, that strikes me of no relevance. I happen to think that you are reading him a bit too literally. I think he was saying that both Ostrog and Kosminski were at liberty for some time after the murder of MJK and there were no further murders during that time, whereas Druitt committed suicide almost immediately afterwards. It's not a brilliant argument but not as terrible as you claim. The main point is that he concluded that Kosminski was a weak suspect.

As a general point about Sims, I can't accept that he was merely a puppet whose strings were always being pulled by Macnaghten so that his views are never different to Mac's views. Hence I don't think it's safe to conclude that just because Sims wrote something he was doing it at the bidding of Mac or with his agreement or knowledge.

Ahhhhhh Logan. I'll never forget the joy of when I first read it. Unexpected and extraordinary confirmation of my theory - more substantial truth in even more fictitious form.

I think not, Jonathan but, that said, I don't wish to deprive you of such a joyful memory.

I don't think you're being very generous with half a tick. Surely I deserve a full tick! That no witness was identified as Jewish is the minor point. The main point is that Logan doesn't say that the man seen by any witness was Slade. Nor does he even confirm that the woman with the man was Eddowes.

I remind you that Logan's book is an odd mixture of fact and fiction. He set out, for the benefit of the readers of the Illustrated Police News, certain facts of the Whitechapel murders taken from the newspapers. Those facts are barely interleaved into his fictional story. For the most part, they stand completely separate and apart. In the case of Eddowes, Logan was doing no more than summarizing the evidence at the Eddowes inquest. That paragraph is basically non-fiction. It has zero connection to the plot. For that reason, I say it is inappropriate to draw any conclusions about what was in Logan's mind about the witnesses (plural). He was basically just reproducing what was in the newspapers!

On the other hand, checking Logan again I found a quote I had missed which matches the English patient in the French asylum:

"... and saw himself, an inmate for life of the criminal lunatic asylum, re-enacting again and yet again the slaughter of those fallen women."

So, you know, thanks for that : )

I can't for the life of me see the connection with a French asylum but if it makes you happy to think you can see one then I am happy.

As the key points of the Macnaghten memorandum were in the public domain from 1898 (and were repeated by Sims in Referee in the years prior to 1905) I just can't see that it gets you anywhere that a few elements of the plot of Logan's book bear some sort similarity to the story of the insane "doctor". It was all in the public domain by 1905. Your theory, as I understand it, relies on Logan being given special inside information about the case but, as I'm sure you are aware, my firm view is that there is no evidence of this whatsoever to be found in the book.

As for Logan's own views, you will no doubt be aware from Bondeson's chapter entitled "Did Guy Logan Know about Jack the Ripper?" that, "When he wrote about Jack the Ripper in his 1928 book Masters of Crime, Logan had clearly moved on from his 1905 theory about the murders. Indeed, he sneers that 'the late George R. Sims was fond of declaring that, in the end, the murderer's identity was known to the police, that he was a doctor who had become insane, and that his body was found in the Thames soon after his last exploit, but nothing to establish this story was ever put forward, and I regard it as pure myth'. That doesn't sound to me like someone who had been given confidential information revealing that the police knew the Ripper to be Druitt.

I mention and acknowledge that very link in my June 2020 article "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Not sure if you've ever seen that one. In case not, the link is https://www.orsam.co.uk/bridgetroubledwater.htm

I don't believe I'm resisting common sense. On the contrary, I think I'm applying it.

Now, what for the future?

Our problem is that you and I see each other in a reverse mirror image: I think you cannot see the forest for the trees, and you think I see forests where there is only a desert.

Each thinks of the other: how can such an intelligent, handsome and youthful man not agree with me??

I honestly don't spend any time wondering why you don't agree with me. I know that you are wrapped up in your own theory. I have done my best to try and disabuse you. I feel that on a number of occasions your arguments have fallen down on the facts and that this should make you pause and reflect that the theory may be wrong but I appreciate that I'm not going to change your mind.

The one thing I would say about your approach - or at least your approach as it appears to me - is that you don't seem to be able to even consider the possibility that you may be wrong. I feel that's why you're not even prepared to consider my theory. At least, if you've considered it in your mind, you haven't done so in writing. You express a certainty which I don't feel is justified by the known evidence. In my Memoranda & Marginalia article, while I stated that I feel "absolutely certain" that the Aberconway version was created earlier than the filed version, I say, by contrast, that I am "reasonably certain" that the significant differences can be explained by amendments made by Anderson. So I don't claim to be 100% right. I'm always open to hearing other views.

I actually find the time zone difference is helpful. I read your emails in the morning, think about them during the day and reply in the evening. Not a problem for me.

David, how about this as a solution to our intellectual impasse: Christine and I will be in the U.K. in November (my illness has forced my retirement) and we could catch up at your local (in London?) and have a much more exciting - yet civil - discussion with rapid responses and counter-arguments. Maybe we should sell tickets?

I appreciate the sentiment behind this offer, Jonathan, but as a way of moving forward in an intellectual debate I fear it's a non-runner. There's no way I can keep all the facts and information about this case in my head. I need to check lots of things before I reply to these emails. Just to give one example: if we were to discuss this in-person, you might tell me something is in Logan's book, such as a Jewish witness seeing Slade, I would have no way of checking this and we would end up in a position of uncertainty and confusion, unable to really move forward.

You wrote to me in response to my Mac article so I assume you wanted something. Perhaps you wanted to educate and inform me. Perhaps you simply wanted to put your objection to my conclusion on record. I don't know. I'm perfectly happy to end the discussion at this point. I've been careful not to ask you any questions in this email nor request anything from you. I'm sure you are aware that you haven't convinced me of your theory but if you manage to find any new evidence I will [be] interested to read about it, as always. If you do wish to reply and keep the discussion going please feel free to do so, if not that's perfectly fine.

No response was received from JH to the above.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

If, having read the above exchanges, you are finding it hard to understand what Jonathan was saying, you are not alone. It's all very complicated, if not convoluted. I probably won't be able to do his argument justice but here's what I think he means....

JH believes that Druitt was the 30-year-old man with a fair complexion and fair moustache seen with Eddowes by Lawende. The fact that, according to Lawende, the man supposedly had the appearance of a sailor does not dishearten him. He also believes that, later that same morning, Druitt was arrested by PC Spicer when found in Henage Court with a prostitute but then let go. The fact that this man was described as a Brixton doctor does not dishearten him.

That Druitt had been identified, arrested and released was Scotland Yard's dirty secret which, for some unexplained reason, Macnaghten needed to hide at all costs.

Mac had been told by Vicar Charles Druitt in 1891 that Montague had confessed to being Jack the Ripper before he committed suicide in the Thames. For reasons which I've never understood, Mac and the vicar came to a secret agreement that the news of Montague being the Ripper would be held back from the public until ten years after Montague's death when it would be revealed in somewhat disguised form by a north country vicar friend of Charles.

When the Sun published its articles about Cutbush in 1894, however, Macnaghten became worried that Vicar Druitt would renege on the agreement and go public about Montague being Jack the Ripper. I don't understand why this would have been a problem for Macnaghten. Perhaps he wanted to take all the glory for solving the case? I don't know. But he suddenly felt the need to pre-empt the vicar by preparing a memorandum which he could leak to the press or to a selected crime writer at a time of his choosing in order to get the information about Montague Druitt into the public domain. At the same time, he also wanted to secretly write a modified version of the memo to the Home Secretary for reasons which are not entirely clear to me.

The memo for public consumption needed to hide the fact that the killer had been seen by Lawende, so Macnaghten created a fictional City Police Constable who, he pretended, had seen the killer near Mitre Square. But this man didn't look like Druitt at all, according to the memorandum, he looked like Kosminski, thus throwing the reader of his memorandum (and eventually the public) off the scent so that they wouldn't know that Druitt had been seen. I guess that's also why Druitt needed to be said to be aged 41 so that he wouldn't be connected to the 30 year old man with a fair moustache seen by Lawende.

Macnaghten also wanted to hide from the Home Secretary the fact that Druitt was identified and arrested but if you asked me to explain why he removed mention of the City PC and of Druitt's age I couldn't tell you. If you also asked me to explain why Macnaghten cared about the incompetence of the police in 1888, before he had joined the force, I also really have no idea. You'd think that if he was going to go behind Anderson's back, break the chain of command and secretly write a memorandum for the eyes of the Home Secretary, he would have wanted to drop Anderson in it. After all, with Anderson being ultimately responsible for the failure of Scotland Yard to capture and convict Druitt in 1888, perhaps Anderson would have to resign and Macnaghten, the hero, who had solved the case in 1891, would get his job. At least that's one theory you could easily put forward if you were so minded.

When writing his memo to the Home Secretary, Macnaghten wanted to boost Kosminski as a suspect because otherwise, if he kept in the part about Kosminski and Ostrog having been exonerated, all focus would be on Druitt. Now, you might think that this is exactly what Macnaghten would have wanted, especially as this is what he was planning to leak to the public in his own personal copy of the report (i.e. the 'Aberconway' version), but you would be wrong. He didn't want the Home Secretary, apparently, thinking that Druitt was such a strong suspect because it might have raised questions as to why he hadn't been arrested in 1888.

Jonathan never explained to me why Kosminski actually had to be described as a 'strong' suspect to the Home Secretary, and it doesn't seem to fit in with Macnaghten's motives, but, well, I guess he can't be expected to explain everything that was going in inside Macnaghten's head.

LORD ORSAM
First published on 29 May 2023