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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2880
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 1:39 pm: | 
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Up till now I have only been firing a quarter pounder at the Macnaghten Memo but have now decided to launch a full broadside to see if I can’t sink it dead in the water.
The ‘Council of Seven’ was formed by Macnaghten to deal with crimes of a ‘knotty’ nature, obviously he headed this council of war, and five chief inspectors joined him in the deliberations, but it is the all-important seventh man that is of interest, the Executive Head.
Charles Henry Cutbush.
I think it fair to say that the Whitechapel Murders were perhaps the ‘knottiest’ crimes in both officer’s careers.
I would also suggest that Charles Henry Cutbush played a pivotal role in the formation of the document.
Now to the man himself, Sir Melville Macnaghten.
I quote from ‘My Experiences at Scotland Yard’ by Basil Thompson published in New York in 1923:
‘He had an astonishing memory both for faces and names; he could tell you every detail about a ten-year-old crime, the names of the victims, the perpetrator and every important witness.’
This is from the man who succeeded Macnaghten at Scotland Yard and is an impeccable source of reference.
So please tell me what happened to this ‘astonishing memory’ when it came to his catastrophic Memo? |
c.d.
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cd
Post Number: 103
Registered: 9-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 2:00 pm: |
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Hi AP,
The only thing that I can think of is that his knowledge of the facts was sketchy at best. If he was in haste to write his famous memo, there might not have been time to check them. Why the memo would have an urgency to it, I do not know. Perhaps someone else can speculate.
c.d. |
Jennifer Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 3270
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 2:50 pm: |
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AP,
he wasn't on the case at the time though, right?
Jenni
"You know I'm not gonna diss you on the Internet
Cause my mamma taught me better than that."
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Debra J. Arif
Inspector
Username: Dj
Post Number: 201
Registered: 4-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 2:56 pm: |
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AP
I was going to post this morning on this "council of seven" business, to see what was known about it. Was CHC definitely one of the 7?
Debra |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5328
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 3:02 pm: |
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I confess I have never heard of the Council of Seven. It sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story or something from ancient Athens.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2881
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 3:22 pm: |
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Quite right, Jennifer, but the system was in place, he inherited the 'Council of Seven' as did his follower.
I think there are a few ex-Met officers on the boards who will tell you that it still exists, that's if they don't choke on their pints that is.
I can't say that, yet, Debra, but Charles Henry Cutbush was the senior officer of the executive branch and this was the officer who played second in command at these high level meetings to deal with 'knotty' crimes.
Very real I'm afraid, Robert, prepared to be afraid. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2882
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 4:09 pm: |
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Not good enough, CD.
According to the source I have mentioned above, Macnaghten knew the exact detail of every single police officer under his command at the Met - 700 of them - and was able to cite their entire police record if given a name.
He really only had two names to deal with in the Memo, both beginning with ‘C’ and he lost the plot completely.
It is out of character and reference for the man and his reputation.
There is something terribly wrong here. |
Brad McGinnis
Inspector
Username: Brad
Post Number: 292
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 12:54 am: |
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You guys ever get the feeling that all these officials were enbarrassed by the whole thing? I mean Abberline retired and was hired by the Pinkertons to over see security in Monaco. Neither the Pinkertons or the Grimaldi family are stupid. They wouldnt have multibillion dollar ventures if they were. I got the feeling that those close to the case always had a thorn in their side. The great unsolved mystery. Perhaps their vanity forced them to choose a suspect, however wrong. I also get a feeling that we today know more about JTR than anyone did back in '88. Im not sure we'll find an amicable solution, but hope springs eternal. I just hate to see long dead, apparently devoted civil servants dismissed as fools. And Im glad those here at CB have erected a stone at Abberlines grave. The guy lived a pretty tragic life. Best to all, Brad |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2883
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 3:51 am: |
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Debra has wisely and kindly clipped my wings here as her own research appears to show that the Council of Seven was not formed by Macnaghten until 1907.
My sincere apologies expressed for speeding when I should have been braking. |
Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 2656
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 5:01 am: |
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Brad,
You may be absolutely right about all the points you make but it seems to me to be not consistent with historical truth and research to be selective with the facts about the background/words/ conduct of those who were in charge of this still unsolved series of crimes.
Unless we are scrupulous and unsparing about scrutinising the context in which the murders and mutilation of these hapless women took place
we will not arrive at a solution to the mystery.
I accept totally your comments on Abberline,clearly a highly regarded, tireless and excellent detective who was popular with both his colleagues and the locals of Whitechapel by contemporary accounts. Abberline was certainly no fool.But records re the Cleveland Street scandal reveal that he was capable,in certain very delicate matters, of involving himself in a "cover up".Thats all ----as far as I am concerned.It doesnt mean he was involved in aa "cover up" regarding Jack the Ripper.It means that in certain cicumstances he could have been.
Also the police of that time were often made to be the tools of successive conservative and liberal governments
whether they liked it or not,and often they objected most strongly [viz Monro"s outbursts from time to time].
What also becomes clear is the consuming nature of the Irish question in British politics
in 1888.I dont think its widely understood how many senior police were at breaking point because of it all-having to take "rest leave"/resigning their posts/dying even -and it wasnt the only huge problem on their agenda either since vast armies of the "unemployed"-and in White chapel itself were in "serried ranks" ready to take on the government in some of the biggest demonstrations in British History.
I still find it astonishing to read how each and every senior police officer,including Abberline,who was leading the hunt for the ripper was also involved in the Anglo/ Irish Home Rule "troubles".
I also believe that how they were able to prioritise and juggle their commitments, how many bowed under pressure etc matters to our understanding of this case.
It is,after all, the very context in which the ripper investigation took place.
Also Brad,in the England of 1888 ,the spirit of satire in journalism and the press generally a
was very much alive and well and had been since the time of Swift!It was very much a part of our culture and still is!
Natalie |
John Ruffels
Inspector
Username: Johnr
Post Number: 496
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 5:17 am: |
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O.K., A.P.,
I keep hearing what a "drongo" Melville Macnaghten was, and yet I also learn he stayed in charge of vital segments of the Metropolitan Police Force for a goodly number of years.That he had a memory like an elephant ( I forget what that is like);and yet he got many verifiable facts wrong in the MM. That he wasted time attending crime scenes and sensational murder trials.That he was obsessed with the Ripper cases
yet got so many facts wrong.
Thanks A.P., for correcting your impression of Melville's invlovement with the " League of Redheaded Gentlemen". Which did not get a guernsey until 1907.
However,when, and with whom was Macnaghten on the
Committee studying the feasibility of introducing fingerprinting to Scotland Yard?
Could this group have been a precursor to A.P.'s speculative "League of Gentlemen"? |
Debra J. Arif
Inspector
Username: Dj
Post Number: 202
Registered: 4-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 5:38 am: |
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Maybe you should speed up again AP and just ignore me, I am kangaroo hopping all over the road here!
If the council wasn't formed until 'recently' according to the 1907 Washington Post, I wonder how come it was already in place to work on the Moat House farm case in 1903? |
Howard Brown
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Howard
Post Number: 1201
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 6:13 am: |
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A.P.
Regarding the Council of 7;
To what extent were their powers? Were they a determinant in how "knotty" issues were prosecuted, not only investigated? Who,if anyone, would oversee them?
Any idea to the names of the other five involved?
Thank you.... |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2885
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 7:35 am: |
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Thanks, John, I was just looking at a reference into this fingerprinting committee and department, I’ll have to go back and see if any names are named.
Anyways, as Debra has just shown us, it is entirely possible that this Council of Seven was indeed up and working at the time of the Cutbush incident, and certainly at the time the Macnaghten memo was written.
We shall see in due course.
My feeling when I read the original reference to the Council of Seven was that this was something that Macnaghten had inherited rather than created.
How, at the moment all one can say is the five other members of the Council were drawn from the most senior chief inspectors of the Yard. Hopefully some material might pop up soon that names a few names.
My thinking right now, is that the reason the Macnaghten Memo is such a woefully inadequate document is that it was put together by a Council of Seven rather than Macnaghten alone, and that each one of the Seven had a vested interest to protect.
Hence the complete and utter mess, full of its disinformation, and obviously in parts designed to protect the reputation of certain individuals whilst sabotaging others.
You know what they say, How, ask a committee to design you a horse and they’ll come up with a camel every time. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2886
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 8:42 am: |
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Somehow when looking at the Memo I’m strongly reminded of the Adolf Beck fiasco, where he was falsely accused by what appears to be police witnesses and then imprisoned for offences that he had never committed.
Just as in the Cutbush/Collicot case there is a confusion of identity and crimes resulting in the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of Beck while the real culprit was left free to continue his criminal career. And it does appear that the senior police officials involved were aware of the true facts of the matter, but for years used smoke and mirrors to conceal this gross miscarriage of justice… when the two senior police officials were eventually dragged into the most senior court of the land to explain the situation that they had sanctioned and actively controlled, they squirmed… oh by god, how they squirmed.
I suppose not many are aware that the two senior police officials involved in this dreadful fracas were our old friends Sir Robert Anderson and Sir Melville Macnaghten.
So yes, I can see a clear precedent for the Memo as being a source of exactly the same kind of disinformation - smoke and mirrors if you like - for the eventuality that the Cutbush/Collicot case was going to blow up in their faces just like the Beck case.
There is certainly a great deal of similarity between the cases which certainly needs closer examination. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5329
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 01, 2005 - 4:58 am: |
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AP, interesting idea of yours that the MM was some kind of committee job. One factor that points slightly in that direction, is the mention of Race keeping the knife. Why on earth should Sir M insert a private gripe like this in a memorandum that was meant only for the Minister?
Robert |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2892
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 01, 2005 - 12:58 pm: |
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Never thought of that, Robert.
Of course the private gripe concerning the knife was totally out of place in the Memo.
I'm going to do the test I suggested on the morrow, and weigh up the correct detail in the Memo and balance that with the incorrect.
Be interesting to see which way the scales swing. |
belindafromhenmans
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 4:33 am: |
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Don't apologise. Can you and Debs tell us all you feel you know about the Counsel of seven, it sounds very interesting. |
Debra J. Arif
Inspector
Username: Dj
Post Number: 204
Registered: 4-2005
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 4:19 pm: |
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Just going back to the Moat house farm case and the date of 1903.
The case in question involved the murder of a woman at the farm in 1889 and from implications given in various books on the case the police knew that the woman had possibly been murdered very early on , but without finding the body were unable to prove it.
If the council of seven were involved in the case in 1903 when the body was found and the murderer brought to trial, then is it possible they were involved as early as 1889? They were definitely interested before 1902.
There was also some legal hoo ha over the reporting of this case in the press prior to the trial.
Is there anyone who knows more about this case?
Debra |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2903
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 4:51 pm: |
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I think you to be right, Debra.
Sorry to the person concerned but I have nicked this wholesale:
'Samuel Dougal was devoid of morals, a psychopath with no conscience and a murderer none to careful about covering his tracks.
That he got away with murder for years was down to his unquenchable self-confidence and magnetic charm.
Dougal was born in Bow in 1846, finished school and secured a job as an apprentice in a civil engineer’s office.
But the young man was in search of fun, not regular employment. When his debts, his drinking, his womanising and his father started to catch up with him, he ran off to join the Army, enlisting at Chatham in 1866.
For 21 years he toured the world with the Royal Engineers, serving in Wales, Ireland, Nova Scotia, and finishing his service at Aldershot in 1887, where he was quartermaster-sergeant and chief clerk.
His military career was spotless but his home life was not so good. He had married one Miss Griffiths in 1869. The couple had four children, but she had to endure his drunkenness and violence for 16 years.
Then, in June 1885, she suddenly fell violently ill. 12 hours later she died in agony.
Violent death
Dougal returned to England on leave just two months later, with a new wife. In October she was dead too, after a bout of violent vomiting.
Both women were buried within 24 hours of death. And, as both occurred on military property, neither body was subject to post mortem.
In 1887, the regiment returned to England, Dougal with another woman, though this time they didn’t marry. She had a baby, but was so beaten by Dougal that she fled back to Halifax, posing as a widow.
The decommissioned soldier moved through a quick succession of Civvy Street jobs – publican, steward of a Conserva-tive club, surveyor, clerk, salesman and storekeeper.
There were even more women than jobs. He fathered two more children with a young widow, but again the violence was so much that she fled.
He ran a pub in Ware, Hertfordshire, supported by an elderly woman and her cash. When the house ‘accidentally’ burned down in 1889, Dougal anticipated an insurance payday but instead wound up in St Albans Crown Court, charged with arson.
The lucky Dougal escaped due to lack of evidence and skipped off back to Ireland, where he met and married Sarah White in 1892. The
third Mrs Dougal bore him two children.
By 1898, Dougal was without a wife again and his youngest child was dead after suffering convulsions.
Spinster’s fortune
Camille Holland was a spinster of 55 when she had the misfortune to bump into Dougal at the Earl’s Court Exhibition that year. She had recently come into an inheritance of £6,000 – an enormous amount for the time.
Dougal persuaded Miss Holland to invest in Moat House Farm, outside Saffron Walden, in January 1899.
There was a succession of servant girls, most driven out by his drunken sexual advances. The last, Florrie Havies, was also the last person to see Camille Holland alive.
On 19 May, Miss Holland said she was off to do some shopping – her whereabouts would remain a mystery for another four years.
Unexpected exit
Dougal told Florrie that her mistress had unexpectedly boarded a train to London and had written saying she would soon return.
Remarkably, though rumours flourished and Dougal’s behaviour got no better, nobody chose to dig any deeper until April 1903.
In the intervening years, Dougal had forged cheques to siphon money from Camille’s bank accounts, transferred the deeds of Moat House to himself, moved Sarah White in as his daughter, and impregnated another servant, Kate Cranwell.
But the police were finally closing in. On Friday 13 March, 1903, Dougal moved out of the farm with Kate Cranwell’s sister, Georgina, also pregnant. The pair took the train to Liverpool Street and then on for a weekend of pleasure in Bournemouth.
Dougal was eventually apprehended not by the police, but by a sharp-eyed bank clerk, who called officers when the killer tried to change some £10 notes at the Bank of England.
The police moved in to Moat House, digging up the farmyard and, on 27 April, Miss Holland’s corpse was found in a drainage ditch.
Dougal’s defence in court was typically confident if implausible. He claimed he had been unloading his gun, when it accidentally went off. Panicking, he had hidden her body in the ditch.
The father of 11, husband of three and lover of many more was hanged at Chelmsford Gaol on July 8, 1903.'
My thanks to whoever did this sterling research. |
David O'Flaherty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 1145
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 5:00 pm: |
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Hi Debra,
I've never heard of this case before, but I did find this summary on a Google search. It might be old news to you, but maybe there are some names or incidents mentioned you didn't know about.
Was the legal conflict about reporting the case to do with an inquest? Sometimes, when the inquest had a good idea of who the murderer was, coroners objected to the press's reporting of murder cases while inquests were underway, as it could either help a murderer or ruin an innocent person.
This is going back a way, but this debate about whether inquests should be opened or closed kind of explains the concern. Hansard, March 1827:
Sir Robert Inglis thought, that Coroners should possess the discretionary power, which they seldom exercised except in extreme cases, of excluding the public from their Courts. It sometimes happened that the publication of the evidence taken before a Coroner facilitated the escape of a prisoner, and in other cases it operated to the prejudice of a prisoner, by creating an unfavourable impression against him previously to his trial. What was meant by publicity was, that reporters should be present to send forth to the world every thing which occurred before the Coroner, and to that he decidedly objected, for the reason which he had stated.
Mr. O’Connell observed, that prisoners might adduce evidence in their favour at inquests. A verdict of murder given by a Coroner’s Jury was as likely to prejudice the minds of the public against a prisoner as the publication of the evidence on which the verdict was founded.
The topic of debate was whether there were circumstances coroners could exclude the press. Some inquests, like the second Bravo inquest in 1876, turned into a kind of public grand jury where the inquest pretty much aired all of the dirty laundry of Florence Bravo and Dr. James Gully (an affair resulting in an abortion) without actually charging them with a crime. After running for something like twenty-four sessions over three months, no one could prove that they were responsible for the poisoning death of Charles Bravo. Yet Gully was ruined and some critics went "Hey, wait a minute here . . ."
But generally everyone agreed that publicity was the soul of justice and that inquests should remain open. I dunno if that helps at all or if an inquest was even an issue in your case, not being familiar with it.
Dave |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2905
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 5:19 pm: |
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I would say, Debra, that the police had probably been interested in Samuel Herbert Dougal since 1885, and that the discovery of the body in 1903 was the culmination of that specific interest.
So, yes, I could see this as a sitting down of the 'Council of Seven' some years before the Whitechapel Murders. |
Debra J. Arif
Inspector
Username: Dj
Post Number: 205
Registered: 4-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, December 03, 2005 - 3:34 pm: |
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Thanks for the information AP and Dave, I haven't had time to look any further into it, there aren't many clues as to what the legal argument was about, there was a definite contempt of court by one of the newspapers reporting the case at the time, how, I have no idea.
The police who worked on this case, and later wrote about it don't seem to be able to agree on how or why this man was eventually caught.
Debra |
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