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Who did Macnaghten mean?
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion :
Who did Macnaghten mean?
Author: Curious
Sunday, 23 January 2000 - 04:04 am |        | In his memoranda MacNaughten states 'The truth, however, will lie at the bottom of the Thames, if my conjections are correct'
This has always assumed to refer to Druitt, could it not equally apply to Netley? who, according to Knight, after the second attempt on Alice Crooks life 'fled from an enraged crowd and drowned himself off Westminster Pier (February 1892)
On this subject are there any more newspaper reports on the two attempts on Alice's life, appart from the Police Illustrated News?, I am in contact with the great,great niece of the adult who was with Alice at the time. |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Sunday, 23 January 2000 - 06:49 am | | Curious:
I believe that you're being misled by Knight and Sickert. There appears not to be any independent information showing that Netley died in the Thames in 1892 or any other year. The name "John Netley" and his profession as coachman comes only from Sickert. The BBC researchers could only find one man of that name who held a similar profession: John Charles Netley who died in 1903 in a street accident near Baker Street. They assumed that he was the man Sickert was referring to: not, in my opinion, a safe assumption. Now although John Charles Netley may have been born in Paddington in 1860, he does not seem to appear under any reasonable variant of that name in the 1881 census. The nearest match is George A. Netley born about 1858 in Paddington and a Head Coachman. Is there a name confusion here or is George a brother to John? Another possibility is that the Netley who died in 1903 was not born in the UK and therefore the 1860 birth is coincidental. There are certainly Netley births in Ireland. All this however is not terribly important as the man who died in 1892 is named Nickley according to the A/Z. Please take no notice of the statement in that worthy tome that Nickley is a non-existant English surname. That should be corrected in the next edition. There are people of that name born in the UK and Ireland. The best candidate for the suicide might be John Nickley born in Co. Cork, 2/3/1871 who might have been Sickert's "Netley" but then again might not. If he is, then he would be very young to have been Jack.
The stories about assasination attempts on Alice Margaret Crook come from extremely dubious sources; the earlier one has been proved fictitious. After all, even in Late-Victorian London, if the Government really wanted to dispose of someone, that could have been done very easily. I'm afraid that, like the Diary, the whole Knight/Sickert story is of very low credibility.
Peter |
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