| Author |
Message |
    
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1265
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 3:52 pm: | 
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Was not sure if this letter is already known:
Borowitz Crime Manuscripts, 1663-[ongoing]
Inventory
Prepared by Kate Medicus, May 10, 2000
Updated by Cara Gilgenbach, April 28, 2004
2 document cases, .66 cubic ft., 11th floor
Scope and content
This collection includes a variety of manuscript materials relating to true crime and to crime, detective, and mystery writing.
The collection is arranged in chronological order; subcollections are in separate boxes and also arranged chronologically.
Most of the collection is the gift of Albert and Helen Borowitz; some items have been purchased to complement the Borowitz Collection.
Box 1
Contents
[1907?], Feb. 11. Macnaghten, M[elville] L. To [George] Sims. [autograph letter, signed]. 2 p. [on note paper with embossed stamp of Metropolitan Police Office].
Provides times, places, and descriptions of five murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1049
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 4:07 pm: |
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Where are you AP digging up all this?This latest snippet is truly fascinating since Sims and Machnaghten must have become good friends over the years.Interesting that he appears to have trusted Sims and given him his reasons for suspecting Druitt.Maybe after the Cutbush scare in the Sun he felt he had to befriend at least one journalist and bring him on side.I wonder did he tell him he had destroyed all the evidence he had on Druitt?I wonder too what Sims knew of the Cutbush affair?And crucially whether Machnaghten ever betrayed to him more information about the Cutbushes.....it was after all himself who threw all the cards in the air to clear the name of Cutbush from the Sun"s yellings about him being the ripper.So I relly would like to know whether Sims the journalist ever wrote anything about Cutbush himself?
natalie |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 452
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 4:19 pm: |
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I posted a transcript of the letter here last year:
http://casebook.org/cgi-bin/forum/show.cgi?tpc=4920&post=66265#POST66265
after Cara Gilgenbach kindly provided me with a copy of it. At the time she was intending to put a scan of the letter on the Kent State University website, but I'm not sure whether she ever did.
Stewart Evans later told me he knew about this letter (and, if I remember correctly, knew Borowitz).
There are a couple of other pieces of correspondence between Macnaghten and Sims at the British Library, but they contain nothing explicitly Ripper-related.
Chris Phillips
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1050
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 4:31 pm: |
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Thanks Chris,I had read it on the thread but had not realised its significance at the time.In fact it seems to have been a fairly close friendship the two developed over the years.Interesting.
Best Natalie |
Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1051
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 4:31 pm: |
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Thanks Chris,I had read it on the thread but had not realised its significance at the time.In fact it seems to have been a fairly close friendship the two developed over the years.Interesting.
Best Natalie |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1268
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 4:55 pm: |
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Sorry Chris
Didn't mean to step on your toes.
In my defence I was unsure whether I had seen a reference to the letter before.
Age and brandy take their toll. |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 454
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - 5:34 pm: |
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AP
Not at all.
I just thought I'd post the link in case people were curious to see the transcript.
Chris Phillips
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Stewart P Evans
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - 3:10 am: |
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Al Borowitz sent me a copy of this letter about ten years ago. A copy of it appears in The Borowitz True Crime Collection Exhibition Catalog, Kent State University, 1990-91.
Al has donated a fine crime collection, and Ripper-related collection to Kent State University, Ohio, and a full list of his Ripper collection, with dozens of books, appears on their website at http://speccoll.kent.edu/truecrime.html
It is a well-known fact that Macnaghten and Sims were old friends. Sims was rather more than a mere journalist, he was also an author, poet and playwright and moved in high-society circles.
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2344
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, July 31, 2005 - 6:08 pm: |
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Fair enough, but what does the last paragraph mean?
I'm lost here.
'Dear Sims,
Don't forget "Dowt" which her name
is Devereux, & don't trouble to reply
to this
Yours always
M.L. Macnaghten'
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2345
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, July 31, 2005 - 6:43 pm: |
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Got it now.
'Image reference: CRIM 1/97/7
Photograph of Beatrice Devereux, murdered by husband Arthur together with her twin sons, on 28 January 1905, and hidden in a trunk.'
But Mac didn't know that Beatrice had in fact triplets, and the third son, Tony, went on to forge the Ripper Dairy.
And so is history made. |
Howard Brown
Chief Inspector
Username: Howard
Post Number: 758
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, July 31, 2005 - 8:51 pm: |
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http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/truecrime/borocrime.html
The URL that Mr. Evans provided above doesn't work.
This one, the one Chris found, does.... |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2347
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 01, 2005 - 4:35 pm: |
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Ten years is a long time.
I'm not surprised that the URL doesn't work.
It was seven years too late. |
