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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through May 13, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: Specific Suspects:
Contemporary Suspects [ 1888 - 1910 ]:
Druitt, Montague John:
Archive through May 13, 2001
Author: David M. Radka
Sunday, 30 April 2000 - 11:30 pm |        | Simon,
McNaghten.
David |
Author: Neal Glass
Monday, 05 June 2000 - 01:45 pm | | Hello, everyone. I have received a letter from Philip Sugden regarding comments made by Stewart Evans on the George Chapman message board on 7 April, 2000. I have summarized Mr. Sugden's letter on the Chapman board and direct your attention to it. This I do because several of you who normally frequent this board took an interest in the discussion that raged on that board that first week of April. I contacted Mr. Sugden about the matter a few days afterward, and his reply has only just now arrived.
Regards Neal |
Author: David Anderson
Sunday, 11 June 2000 - 02:30 pm | | Does anyone have any further details on Druitt's appearance at the high court 29.11.88. I would appreciate a verbatim copy of the report. Has one been posted in the past ? I am interested in the details of the litigation. Thank You.
David Anderson |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 25 June 2000 - 02:23 pm | | PRINCE EDDY'S VISIT TO WIMBORNE
The details of Eddy's visit to Wimborne appeared in the ' Southern Guardian ' of Saturday 22nd December 1888.
The Prince was reported to be arriving by train at Canford Station at 5.20pm on the afternoon of Monday December 17th , but he did not actually arrive on that train but on the next one ( at 6.49pm ). The weather was foggy , chilly and cold ; a group of onlookers had hung on to see the Prince arrive but didn't cheer him when he arrived , they were probably too cold and miserable ! Lord Wimborne met the Prince at the station and took him to his home at Canford Hall in his personal carriage. Shooting took place from the Tuesday to the Thursday with a total of 2395 pheasants , 52 partridges , 49 hares , 83 rabbits , 18 woodcock , 4 snipe and 89 wild duck being bagged.
The ball was held on the Thursday night in the Great Hall at Canford house , with music by the Bournemouth Italian Band. The guest list was long and occupies over a full column in the newspaper ; I would estimate that there were around 170 individual or party invitations issued , and that between 400-500 people attended. The guest lists were essentially made up of local dignitaries , a few members of the nobility , local colonels and vicars and the better-off families of the Wimborne-Canford-Bournemouth area.
Prince Eddy left Canford on the 11.10am express train back to London , on the morning of Friday 21st December 1888. |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 25 June 2000 - 03:06 pm | | NOW THE INTERESTING BITS , AND THERE ARE TWO...
(i) About a third of the way down the column of invitees to the ball appears this little entry :' ; Druitt ; Mrs and Miss , and Mr. , Montagu , Wimborne ; ' Thus an invitation went out to Mrs Druitt and one of her daughters , and to a Mr Druitt who is named so he cannot be confused with Mrs Druitt's late husband : Montagu(e) Druitt !
Now as we all know , Mrs Druitt was in a mental hospital at this time and Montague was lying at the bottom of the Thames !
The way the invitation is phrased , it seems as if Lord Wimborne considered Mrs Druitt as the head of the family as her name appears first , then a daughter who was presumably supposed to be taking care of her , or her ward. But then protocol is broken. It is not William Druitt , the eldest son , who is invited to come but Montague Druitt himself ! Now this is unusual indeed. It seems Lord Wimborne did have some knowledge of the Druitt family as he knew that Montague's father was dead , thus it is likely he would have known that William Druitt was the head of the family. Thus the conclusion is INESCAPABLE :Montague Druitt was invited to the ball for some special and individual reason !
It is possible that this was at the behest of Eddy himself ; consider the evidence :
Why did Eddy , who should have been at court in mourning for Alexander of Hesse , go to Wimborne anyway of all places ? Dorset is a long way from London , in the remote countryside of western England. There would have been shooting parties elsewhere , e.g. in the Home Counties or Norfolk , which Eddy could have attended if he had wished. Or he could have gone to visit a friend. As it was , Lord Wimborne was just holding a quiet shooting party in the run-up to Christmas and was not expecting any royal visitor at all : Eddy's appearance caught him on the hop and a ball had to be hastily organised.
So for some reason , Prince Albert Victor makes a suprise visit to a little town in the countryside , breaking royal protocol about being in mourning for a dead relative too.
But there is more...
(ii) Allow me to quote from the article :" The party staying at Canford Manor during the week included Prince Albert Victor , the Earl and Countess of Sefton and Lady G.Molyneaux , the Earl and Countess of Clarendon , the Earl of Shaftesbury , the Russian Ambassador ( M. de Stael ) , Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill , ( My italics - SJO ) Lord Drumlaurig , Lord Cantalope , the Hon. Lady Caterell , Lady Sarah Spencer Churchill , Mr Holford , Mr & Mrs & Miss Hope , Mr Montagu Guest , Mr and Miss Harvey , Mr Wilson Patten and Mr Alfred Montgomery. " Thus Lord Randolph was at the party as well , mysteriouser and mysteriouser... |
Author: David Anderson
Sunday, 25 June 2000 - 03:28 pm | | Hello Simon. I am a new poster to these boards but not new to the subject. I am not offering any criticism whatsoever of your posting above, except to say that Anne Druitt, Montagues Mother, was not in fact in any asylum at the time you mention. I am in possession of a letter written by a Doctor Gasquet, appended to Annes case notes, which indicate that her leave of absence had expired at the time of Montagues funeral. The obvious implication here is that she was not, in fact, confined during the period of the Whitechapel murders. Furthermore, even though we now know that Montague was lying at the bottom of the river,that fact was not known until his body was discovered on the 31st December ie some 2 weeks after Lord Wimbornes party.
It is however curious that William appears not to have been invited !!! |
Author: Diana
Sunday, 25 June 2000 - 05:04 pm | | | I know! William was the suspect, not Montague. Montague finds out. William commits fratricide, dumping his brother in the Thames. William wasn't invited because William was suspected of being JTR. Hows that! By the way, was William a barrister? |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 25 June 2000 - 05:35 pm | | Hello David !
Since you have stated you helped Dan Farson write his book then I'm sure you know what you are talking about. Would it be possible however for you to confirm Mrs Druitts exact whereabouts in 1888 though ?
As I understand it , Mrs Druitt was sent to the Brooke Hospital , Clapham in July 1888 when she was certified insane by a Dr Perry. Then she was transferred to an asylum in Brighton run by a Dr J.R. Gasquet , in September 1888. She remained there until May 1890 when she was transferred to the Manor House , Chiswick and there she died.
I presume the Dr Gasquet you refer to is the Gasquet who ran the hospital in Brighton : does the letter you have refer then to the fact that Anne Druitt was on leave of absence from the Brighton establishment ( and thus at home ) , or to the fact that she was on leave of absence from the Brooke asylum ? I would be very interested to know !
Diana - William Druitt was a solicitor , not a barrister. Therefore he could not represent a client in a law court. Your theory is possible , but we have no evidence that William was in London at the time of the murders , and Montague himself was in Dorset at the time of the Nichols murder ! |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Monday, 26 June 2000 - 02:34 pm | | Simon: When you say that Druitt was 'in Dorset at the time of the Nichols murder', are you basing this on MJD's cricket schedule (Canford, Dorset, Sept. 1st) or on something else?
By the way, thanks for being so persistant in tracking down the story of Druitt being invited to the ball and taking the time to post it above.
RJP |
Author: Simon Owen
Monday, 26 June 2000 - 05:27 pm | | RJP , I am basing this on Druitt turning out for the cricket match in Canford on September 1st 1888. This would make it almost impossible for him to have killed Nichols due to geography.
I will forward a photocopy of the newspaper article I have to anyone who wants a copy , simply e-mail me with your address ! |
Author: Neal Glass
Tuesday, 27 June 2000 - 07:47 pm | | Simon, I haven't been keeping up with the boards for ages and only posted the highlights of Sugden's letter because I felt it my responsibility. But today RJ dropped me a line about all your efforts, so I've gone through it all with a little bit of perplexity. By every account I have ever read (and at this point it's become quite a lot of different accounts) both William Druitt Sr. and William Harvey Druitt were doctors. So if we could back it up right there and clarify your source or your mistake or whatever it would help me sort some of this. In my own reading over the months there really is a very simple possible explanation for why Druitt, an innocent man, ended up on the Macnaghten list. It may invite some speculation, and the guest list may bolster or discourage certain speculations about the circumstances surrounding Montague's death; but it seems to me from what you're saying here you don't perceive any more possiblity that MJ was the killer than I do?
I'll send you my address sometime today if you're happy to send a photocopy of what you have, and certainly I echo RJ's thanks for your efforts. I could say some things about where you're off and running with this, but I'll wait and see if somebody else doesn't jump up and down on it first.
It's fun to speculate, but it's only responsible to come down to earth once we've had our fun.
Take it easy, Neal |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Wednesday, 28 June 2000 - 01:26 pm | | Actually, though William Druitt Sr. was a surgeon, William H. Druitt (MJ's brother) was a solicitor in Bournemouth. It was William's firm of solicitors that handled the electoral dispute that MJD had successfully argued immediately prior to his suicide. I have read somewhere that the Druitts are still solicitors (Dorset?) but since neither Montague nor William had children, they must be related either through their brother Edward (b. 1859) or through one of William Sr.'s brothers. Many have searched, but no one, I believe, has found proof that MJD ever had medical training.
Simon--Wasn't Forbes Winslow associated with a mental asylum in Hammersmith? I wonder if anyone has ever looked into their list of patients in 1888. (I'm thinking of one of G.R. Sim's apocryphal stories, and, admittedly, this would be a very Ripperesque 'stab in the dark')...
Cheers. |
Author: Neal Glass
Thursday, 29 June 2000 - 07:23 pm | | RJ, It's my understanding that you've gone through the one documented litigation that MJD won, so I'm happy to defer to William Jr. being a solictor, but it's a new one on me. In so many books he's a doctor like his father. MJ is even discussed as being odd for being the only lawyer in the family. It calls to attention that most the material on all of his is fairly worthless. But I would appreciate either you or Simon getting back to me on a solid source for your information about William.
As for MJD being invited for some mysterious reason. There's no basis for that. Nothing of what Simon is getting at supports the idea at all. There's nothing there. MJD's invitation just suggests that whoever had a say in the invites was partial to MJ in some personal way. Because the invitations were so rushed it points to Wimbourne liking Montague, that's all. If not for that, then it could have been any number of mutual friends on the guest list itself who might have wrangled the invitation on his behalf. But because the invitations were impromptu, it suggests to me that Wimbourne himself is the reason MJD was invited. No Jack the Ripper. No conspiracy. Just a personal fondness on the part of the host for one Druitt over another. And if it's true that the mother was actually available for the party, as has been suggested here on this board, then it suggests that Wimbourne was not so much out of the loop with the Druitts as has been previously supposed. He just didn't happen to see MJ himself often enough to know he had disappeared.
By the way, why did Montague end up as a suspect in the first place? How did that occur? See, everyone takes an interest in this without asking themselves how any of this came about. The ideas expounded by Howells & Skinner are for me hard to take seriously, but if that is the drift here, then let me say that a solicitor of a certain age who appears on a list as being a doctor of quite another age was never under any serious investigation by anybody.
The police never knew the first thing about this man.
And there is a very simple possible explanation for how this man that they knew nothing at all about ended up on a list. The simple reason need not have anything to do with Druitt being Jack the Ripper or someone named Churchill being the Ripper or MJ's brother or his mother or anybody on this side of the question.
Later, Neal |
Author: Simon Owen
Friday, 30 June 2000 - 02:33 pm | | Hello Neal !
I am confused as to where you have your information from that William Harvey Druitt was ever a doctor. Lionel Druitt was a doctor. William Druitt senior was a doctor. William Harvey Druitt was ' a solicitor resident in Bournemouth... ' ( A-Z , Page 114 ).
The reason I am interested is that MJ Druitt was confused with a 40yr old medical student - could there have been a case of mistaken identity somewhere ? BTW , WH Druitt was 32 years old in 1888.
As to a relationship between MJ Druitt and Lord Wimborne , we have no evidence that the latter ever knew or even spoke to the latter. Even if Lord Wimborne liked MJ Druitt , he should still have invited William Harvey Druitt to the ball by all the rules of ettiquette and protocol !If he had fallen out with WH Druitt , then no invitation should have been sent to the family at all. Ettiquette in Victorian England among the upper classes was very strict and regimented , I cannot believe that Lord Wimborne would deliver such a snub to William on purpose. I can only come to one conclusion : that Lord Wimborne did not know the Druitt family , and that he was told to invite Montague and his mother by a third party.
Anyone with any opinions on the matter , don't be afraid to post ! |
Author: David M. Radka
Friday, 30 June 2000 - 05:13 pm | | ...tick...tick...tick...
David |
Author: Neal Glass
Saturday, 01 July 2000 - 12:35 pm | | David and his ticking again. Is there a time bomb in the room?
Simon, I've read several things where William Harvey was a doctor, but because this was not my big focus in my reading I can only think of Rumbelow, but there were others along the way.
When this whole question of the party came up, I myself thought there would have to be a third party to explain why a reasonably successful but no less humble solicitor would get invited. That is why I am the one who raised the question of the guest list in the first place. Later as I read Howells & Skinner I realized the invitations were a spur of the moment thing that came about by Eddy's unexpected decision to join the hunt. So for me it does suggest that Wimbourne may have known the Druitts.
Incidentally it was not neccessarily out of character for Eddy to flake out on his family and go have fun. If you want me to roll up my sleeves and dig into the matter of Eddy's general life long flakiness, I guess I can get around to that.
Now, this business of protocol. We don't know all the facts; so whatever the explanation might be in the end you are not situated in an airtight position here. You just aren't, Simon. As for no "evidence" that Wimbourne was friends with Montague, this gets rather circular, doesn't it? They lived in the same area, and in an impromptu decision to invite guests to a gathering MJ gets invited. It seems to me at least plausible that Wimbourne simply knew the family and was partial to MJ.
Nothing proves anything, but the idea can't be ruled out just because it doesn't suit someone's enthusiasm for another possibility. And it's only possibilities we are talking about here, Simon. There's nothing solid, and that's all I meant by saying that you were off and running. Howells & Skinner go off and running in what they do. I go off and running all the time, but then it comes time to back it up and admit we're just kicking around possibilities.
And in that framework, my friend, it is just as possible that Wimbourne was a friend of the family as it is that a third party person was anxious for Montague to be there.
You do, however, bring up a good point. The crux, in fact. All this does suggest that William Harvey was being snubbed. But I don't see protocol in these situations as something as rigid as you insist upon. The rich do as they please and always have, whether it is in Victorian England or elsewhere, particularly (and most especially) when it is a lord condescending to invite members of a middle class family to his gathering. The protocol had considerably more to do with peers among peers than it ever could with relations between high born and professionals. It is the fact that the Druitts were simply bourgeois that caught my eye in this from the start when this discussion first came up on this board so long ago.
So I concede you one thing thus far in this: William was being snubbed. Again, however, it could just as easily suggest that Wimbourne did not personally care for William Harvey for some reason (who knows?), or, perhaps, a little more likely, William Harvey and MJ did not get along too well at this point, and Wimbourne was personally partial to MJ.
Again who knows?
I'm only saying that it can be looked at several different ways. Still, consider this: RJ quite sometime ago was having problems with the timeline to do with William checking on MJ's disapearance. Back then I myself had no conflict in allowing that William really did take his time in checking his brother's disappearance. I suggested that they may not have been close or that they were having problems. Traditionally the question of when William Harvey went looking for MJ has always been treated as a newspaper misprint. That is the convenient explanation, but is it the only one possible?
Let's consider that whole inquest article.
Talk about violating protocol! Consider the remarkable admission that William makes about his brother being dismissed from his school and that MJ's feelings about his mother seem to have been the reason he killed himself. If you want to talk about something glaringly unusual it is someone going public with this kind of information. William lied at one point, as most of us know. The lie was probably to cover for his family, but how weird to consider that he would lie for that reason but not lie to soften the memory of his younger brother's good name and memory.
Why announce that he had been fired? Why make public the issue of his mother's mental condition? Why not spare MJ and the family that stigma?
Think about it. It's more than outrageous.
My point is that William may have really dragged his feet looking for his brother. They may have always had a serious problem about one another. For whatever reason, when it came time for the older brother to protect the memory of his sibling he did no such thing. Instead he publicly announced that MJ had gotten in trouble with his teaching job and had been fired, even that he had been in despair of his life over their crazy mother. These are not even the kinds of things a Victorian brother would say publicly about a living brother, much less one who had died under such tragic circumstances--much less to drag his poor mother into it. Death was this heavy thing back then. Victorian tended to feel no one should speak ill of the dead. And the sanctity of a person's mother!
Honestly, what William Harvey about?
So it is in this corner of the situation that I find the true mystery. This is what I circle when I consider the things you are saying.
There is something strange here. There always has been. And that William was not invited to the party adds to the mystery for me, you see. But as of my posting this message, I don't honestly pretend to know what this is about.
It remains an enigma.
This gets back to the guest list. There are fundamental investigative questions you are not considering because you seem to only want to go one place with this. How many other middle class professionals were in attendance? This is very important. You see, if MJ was one of the very few, then you do have something mysterious. If he was one of a throng of professionals who were invited, it is less mysterious. But I can't see that you have dug that deeply into this, and until I myself have the list I am not at liberty to do so either, am I?
I am happy for there to have been a conncection between MJ and Eddy, but only if there is a strong possibility that there might have actually been one. And even then it does not mean it ever had anything at all to do with the Whitechapel murders.
There are other possibilites.
My interest in all of this will always get back to why MJ ended up on Macnaghten's list, and since I am satisfied that there is a very simple possible explanation for that I have to find compelling reasons to reconsider my own thoughts on the question. And because it allows for William's possible animosity to MJ, I can't help but feel my perspective is as valid as any I have heard to date.
In closing, Simon, there is a difference between something being interesting and something being compelling. Howells & Skinner are often interesting, but I seldom find them compelling. And so far that is where I am at with your working premise.
Do your homework on this, Simon, and let's see where it really goes, rather than where you would like it to go.
Best regards, Neal |
Author: michael feingold
Saturday, 01 July 2000 - 11:50 pm | | Hello - I've been interested in the case a long time but just discovered this site; this is my first posting. Since I've always been struck by the facial resemblance between MJD and Prince Eddy (though I think there was a consdierable height difference), the discovery of the ball invitation interests me greatly.
But I think some common sense should be applied: The Prince did not "inexplicably" visit a small country town; he visited a Lord's country estate, a different matter. invitations to a ball with royal guests of honor wd have been a matter of great prestige in the community, and much of Victorian life depended on appearances. Undoubtedly everyone around Wimborn "knew" of Mrs. Druitt's insanity -- but wd not dream of saying so. The Druitts were a prominent family in the district, and invited as such. William H., as head of his own household in Bournemouth, wd not have been considered a resident of the immediate vicinity; the unmarried Montagu, though living in London (and not heard from for a few weeks), wd have been considered resident at his mother's house. There is no need to assume that he knew Eddy or was in any way friendly with him.
Incidentally, if you want an intriguing connection, the guest list you provide includes Lord Drumlanrig (misspelled on your posting), who was private secretary to a cabinet minister -- Shaftesbury, I think -- but was, more significantly, the elder son of the Marquess of Queensbury and elder brother of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's lover. Subsequent to the revelation of the Cleveland Street scandal -- and shortly before he was to be married -- Drumlanrig shot himself, while visiting another country house; he was said to have done it accidentally while "cleaning his gun."
I don't assert that he, or his brother, or Oscar Wilde, had any connection to the Ripper murders. My point is merely that Victorian upper class society was rather a small town; everybody knew everybody, and the degrees of separation were few.
Possibly the gentry at Wimborne even knew that Montagu was behaving erratically -- they may even have been looking for signs of such behavior, given his mother's condition, since mental illness was widely thought to be hereditary. My suspicion is that we have so little evidence connecting Druitt to the case because the police found a good deal of it -- and hushed it up, not owing to any elaborate conspiracy involving Prince Eddy or anyone else, but because you just didn't say such things about wellborn persons in public.
When William H. appeared at the inquest, he testified that he was Montagu's only living relative -- a flat lie. Obviously, he did this to minimize chances of publicity in Dorset that could, for instance, damage his practice or spoil his sister's chances of marriage. The case was to be kept quiet not as a royal scandal but as an affront to respectability. That's my theory, anyhow. |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 02 July 2000 - 04:03 pm | | The print on the article is not very clear , but Michael is right , the word is Drumlanrig. Thanks for the clarification Michael and the extra information about this mysterious man.
David is ticking again , this time I'm sure we're close to the Radka theory ! |
Author: Simon Owen
Monday, 03 July 2000 - 01:52 pm | | | Test |
Author: Simon Owen
Monday, 03 July 2000 - 02:18 pm | | | Test |
Author: Simon Owen
Monday, 03 July 2000 - 04:00 pm | | I've tried to upload the Southern Guardian Article onto this site , but it hasn't worked. Can anyone give me any advice about uploading JPG files ?
To RJ Palmer and Neal : I have emailed the article to you both personally , it is about 625 KB and will require unzipping to read. Please contact me personally or via this site to confirm you have recieved the article and are able to read it.
Simon |
Author: Neal Glass
Tuesday, 04 July 2000 - 11:13 am | | MIchael, Simon, and RJ,
I think Michael's perspective is basically the sensible one. In the beginning I had no idea that the guest list was so enormously huge. A smaller gathering would have indicated a greater probability of intimacy among those invited. Still, I am a little puzzled by some of what Michael has suggested.
He says (and I quote to make myself clear):
"The Druitts were a prominent family in the district, and invited as such. William H., as head of his own household in Bournemouth, wd not have been considered a resident of the immediate vicinity; the unmarried Montagu, though living in London (and not heard from for a few weeks), wd have been considered resident at his mother's house. There is no need to assume that he knew Eddy or was in any way friendly with him."
From this I gather that the status of marriage is what Michael sees as the determining characteristic? If that is his point I'm not sure I am convinced. I just don't really see how MJ would have been considered a resident at his mother's house.
Most certainly the upper crust were, as he says, a small town. However, the middle class, to which MJ and William H belonged, was a huge metropolis. The English bourgeoisie had conquered Britain quite some time before the 1880s. The Liberal Age, so called, was more or less in full swing. The wealthier of the bourgois were generally welcomed wherever they might have managed to ingratiate themselves. Often the more accomplished were knighted and became baronets, all a part of the politically compromised upper class trying to keep the more powerful middle class seduced with a certain frankly snobbish mystique. The lords and ladies were outnumbered and letting as many who seemed acceptable into their various circles rather than hopelessly trying to shut everybody out.
But MJ was hardly a knight. He was young. He was obscure. If he was not a pauper, he was still a master at a school, and this was not exactly being a barrister. True, the Druitt family itself was prominent. I don't agree with Simon that Wimbourne did not know them. Of course, he did. The question is simply how well he might have known them.
So, as far as I can tell, MJ being invited over William H remains unusual. And how many others of his humble rank were to be in attendence? The list has to be gone over carefully with painstaking attention to ascertain whether what Michael is suggesting about marriage is a standard pattern in the selection of the other guests. Were other familiy members from other circles overlooked in the invitations for reasons that can be deduced to have sprung from the same thinking?
It was no casual thing to be overlooked when it was about the prince attending an event.
Also William H did not have to divulge MJ's suicide note at the inquest. He could have made MJ's dismissal from his school a lot less mysterious, even as he could have ventured to the inquest that the dismissal may have been why his brother was so despondent to have killed himself. Instead he made no secret of one glaring family skeleton (their mother) and did little to soften the fact that his brother had lost his teaching position. And if he really did tarry in looking into his brother's disappearance (a big IF, admittedly),we might wonder if there wasn't some unknown estrangement going on between them.
This is in no way to suggest anyone was the Ripper. It is just to suggest that there are unanswered questions here, missing pieces.
Later, Neal |
Author: Neal Glass
Tuesday, 04 July 2000 - 11:49 am | | Oops. I was no sooner offline than I remembered one rather important blunder in what I said above: William H, as far as I know, was NOT MARRIED in 1888! I tend to think of him as married because one is always reading writers who are not always clear on which William they are talking about, and of course William Sr. was a family man. I stand corrected if it has been ascertained that William H did in fact have his own family, but in the books I have read he is a bachelor. Because the Druitt side of the Ripper is not my focus I may not be as up to date as I should be.
So I'll leave it to someone else to settle it.
I'm reading other things at the moment.
Neal |
Author: Roger O'Donnell
Tuesday, 04 July 2000 - 02:31 pm | | simon,
your test posts dont show any image comand tags at all... Take a look at the formatting link
Roger |
Author: Simon Owen
Friday, 07 July 2000 - 02:24 pm | | From Simon Owen to all posters
To see the ' Southern Guardian ' newspaper article about Prince Eddy's visit to Wimborne , simply click on the following :
Southern Guardian Article |
Author: Simon Owen
Friday, 07 July 2000 - 02:50 pm | | It could be argued that , since William H. Druitt was not living at home in Wimborne but in Bournemouth , he was not invited to the ball because he did not live in the local area. This was , I believe , Michael's point. It is however erroneous because if we look at the list we see a Dr Highmore of Alumhurst Road , Bournemouth being invited - so invitation WAS made to those who lived in Bournemouth. So why was WH Druitt not invited , although his brother who had lived in London for years was ?
If Lord Wimborne had known anything about the Druitts other than their name and status , surely he would have known Montague had not been resident in Wimborne for over 10 years ?( I think ). Mrs Druitt would have to be invited as she was the head of the household in Wimborne , and her unmarried daughter who lived at home too. But why Montague and not William ?
I don't believe in coincidences - and to have Eddy , Lord Randolph and Druitt potentially at the same ball would be an almighty coincidence indeed ! |
Author: Diana
Friday, 07 July 2000 - 05:31 pm | | | I hate to be pedestrian, but having looked at the article, when I saw that great huge list of names going on and on and on I skipped over most of it and it occurred to me that a harried typesetter in a moment of inattention might have left one out. Easy to do when the print is fine and there are so many of them and you are doubtless rushing to meet a publication deadline. When was MJD's body found? Wouldn't it have been a social faux pas of the first magnitude to invite a dead man? |
Author: michael feingold
Saturday, 08 July 2000 - 10:34 am | | | Diana has a point about typesetters. I work for a newspaper and know that almost anything can be omitted from or added to copy in one's wearier moments. Another possible explanation: William, as apparently the only member of the Druitt family to be socially functional at the time, may have declined on his own behalf, while the invitations to MJD (dead but not yet discovered) and Mrs. D (not in the most organized state of mental health) may have gone unanswered, which from the newspaper's vantage point left them still possible guests. Just a thought. |
Author: Simon Owen
Saturday, 08 July 2000 - 01:51 pm | | Diana , are you saying WH Druitt WAS invited to the ball , but was ommitted from the list in the newpaper by a journalistic error ? Thats certainly a possibility.
Another possibility is that Montague was invited as he had been resident in the area recently , working for his family firm of solicitors in the early October ( A-Z p.110 ). He had also turned out for Canford cricket club in September. Thus it is possible Montague spent a lot of time at home and was at least partially resident there. If Lord Wimborne had been using a gazette dating from the beginning of the year 1888 to pick his guests , Druitt being at least semi-resident in Wimborne may have been on it , as would his mother have been. Thus the only mystery then would be WH Druitt not being invited.
Since Montague is mentioned by his first name in the list , we must assume this was to make sure there was no confusion with William snr or William Harvey Druitt as to who was invited. Whether he declined or not , I think WH Druitt would still have been on the invitation list , his firm of solicitors was probably quite well known in Bournemouth. |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 08 July 2000 - 01:59 pm | | Hi, all:
Simon, thank you so much for posting the text of the article on Lord Wimborne's house party. Yes, Diana, it would appear that Montague was invited and listed on the guest list given to the newspaper, but found to be missing in action.
In regard to Monty, here is a Dorset County web page that gives information on his grave and some, it would appear to me, factual information on him. They may have cribbed it from the Casebook, I don't know. You should do a search on "Montague Druitt" to come up with the specific page on him, "The man who may have been Jack the Ripper."
http://www.thedorsetpage.com/Dorset_Home.htm
Chris George |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 08 July 2000 - 02:16 pm | | Hi, Simon Owen and Keith Skinner:
I would like you to think about something else about this newspaper listing. Is it really a reference to Montague John Druitt? Notice first that the spelling is different, "Montagu" not "Montague." Note also that there is a comma after Mr., so that it reads, "Druitt, Mrs. and Miss, and Mr., Montagu, Wimborne..."
If you look throughout this guest list you will find that after name of the person or persons, it is the country house and locale where they lived that is listed. Could this have been a set of Druitts who lived at "Montagu, Wimborne" not a reference to Montague John Druitt at all? I am aware that Montague John Druitt's family "lived at Westfield House which still stands" (this from the Dorset page that I mentioned in my previous post). If this is really Montague John Druitt, the Ripper suspect, why does it not say "Druitt, Mrs. and Miss, and Mr. Montague, Westfield House, Wimborne..."??? I think the possibility that the reference is to some Druitts who lived at Montagu, Wimborne may bear some investigation.
Chris George |
Author: Simon Owen
Saturday, 08 July 2000 - 03:45 pm | | Hi Chris !
I already considered this one , but decided against it ; the word ' Montagu ' merely appears to be a variant spelling of ' Montague '. For instance , compare the spelling of ' Mr Montagu Guest ' early on in the document. It could refer to a Mr So-and-so Montague ( i.e. a surname ) but it would be a big coincidence that he was attending with Mrs Druitt. Similarly it would be a big coincidence if the Druitts lived in an area of Wimborne called Montague ; personally I know of no such area of the town and believe if the writer intended to put the area the Druitts lived in , he would have written ' Mrs and Miss and Mr , Druitt , Westfield House , Wimborne '. Because I am 100% certain in my own mind that the Druitts referred to here are the family of William Druitt senior : the order of persons - ' Mrs and Miss , Druitt ' - implies that the seniormost member of the family was a single female either divorced or widowed. This must be Anne Druitt IMHO. How many other ' Old Widow Druitts ' were there ? However if we wanted to know for certain we could refer to Kelly's Directory for the area for that year , this may even be what Lord Wimborne did.
I think the odds all point to the Druitts on the list being the Druitts we know and love , its just the punctuation is odd in relation to Montague's name. For an even worse example try this from the list : ' Peel , General , Corfe , Lodge , Wimborne '.
Naturally its possible that it wasn't our Montague Druitt but I think you have to rely on a number of coincidences for this to be the case. |
Author: Simon Owen
Saturday, 08 July 2000 - 03:59 pm | | The mysterious absence of William Harvey Druitt on the guest list can probably be explained by one of the following answers :
(i) WH WAS invited but the newspaper ommited his name from the guest list due to an error.
(ii) WH was simply not invited , due to an oversight or an error or a deliberate snub ( the last is unlikely ).
(iii) Lord Wimborne did not know the Druitts , or he did not know them well enough to invite them , but was asked specifically by a third person to invite Montague and thus his immediate family had to be invited too. I would like to think this was Prince Eddy although this is only speculation on my part.
Whichever answer you choose , none is entirely satisfactory. The possibility of a simple coincidence somewhere looms large here : if we use Occam's razor however it would leave us with the likelyhood that Lord Wimborne invited Montague because he needed to , and didn't invite William because he didn't need to. Make of that what you will. |
Author: Neal Glass
Wednesday, 12 July 2000 - 01:07 pm | | Diana, MJ's body was found. But it was not found when the invitations were going out, and we all assume Wimborne was out of the loop about his disappearance.
Oh, and your thoughts on typesetting are in order and very sound.
Simon, you're very grounded in how you're moderating this discussion, and I commend you. None of the possible explanations is satisfactory as you lay them out. You admit that, so there's no contention there. But you still do hold out for Wimborne "needing" to invited MJ and not William H. Well, what's that got to do with anything? Let's say I'm a conspirator and I need to invite someone to a party. Protocol dictates that it is only polite to include his mother and, of course, his older brother. Not inviting the older brother would cause friction between the two brothers, after all. It's not polite. It's not Victorian. And it's not done. There would be no reason to exclude William H simply because he wasn't "needed". No reason in the world.
Also in a ball this big with so many people in attendance who obviously don't necessarily know one another the idea of a coincidence of one or another guests being invited to the same function just isn't very compelling. If it had been an intimate gathering, yes, but this was a huge event with countless numbers of people in attendance.
Now, as far as snubbing being unlikely. Aside from a typesetting error (always possible), the least unlikely explanation has to have it over the other unlikely explanations until new facts clear this up. The least unlikely explanation is that Wimborne wanted MJ to come and was under the impression that he would not have come if his older brother were invited. William H may have taken an unusual amount of time checking into his brother's disappearance. He may not have, true. The dates may have been mistaken in the newspaper account. We'll never know, but when we consider that William H felt no real discretion about his brother's memory in discussing him at the inquest (and not even that much discretion about his mother), it tends to make me think that William H and MJ were not on the best of terms, even that William H's attitude about his mother was less than gentlemanly or filial. Further, his only consideration at the inquest was for the living members of his family who were not mentally incapacitated.
In other words, I see someone who is only think of himself and of the consequences to himself with no thought for anyone or anything else.
My point? There may have been very bad blood between the brothers. This may have been well known. People may have even been under the impression that MJ was the more appropriate Druitt to escort his mother to the ball. It is just as easily possible that Wimborne preferred MJ and knew he would not show up if his brother were invited.
Later, Neal |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 31 December 2000 - 06:48 pm | | From " The Ripper Legacy " by Howells and Skinner p.124 :
" On 7th October 1972 Philip Loftus reviewed Farson's book in the Guardian and , as Donald Rumbelow tells us , Mr Loftus's own indirect association with the Macnaughton family allowed him to throw some light on the problem of the two sets of notes :
' His own interest in Druitt had started several years earlier - in fact when he was staying with a friend , Gerald Melville Donner , who happened to be also the grandson of Sir Melville Macnaughton. Donner owned a Jack the Ripper letter which Loftus thought was a copy , written in red ink , framed and hanging on the wall.
''Copy be damned '' Donner said '' thats the original .'' As proof that he owned some original documents he pulled out Sir Melville Macnaughten's private notes which Loftus described as being in Sir Melville's handwriting on official paper , rather untidy and in the nature of rough jottings. Loftus thought that they mentioned three suspects : a Polish tanner or cobbler ; a man who went around stabbing young girls in the bottom ; and a 41-year-old doctor , Mr M. J. Druitt. "
Why do people think that Druitt was been described here as first , a 41 year old , and secondly , as a doctor ? Is this just a simple error on Macnaughten's part ( Loftus seems pretty specific about the details here ) even though he seems to describe Kosminsky and Cutbush correctly ? Or has a mistake been made somewhere ? |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 13 May 2001 - 04:58 pm | | Evening all,
I'm now conducting a long slow trawl through all the archived boards - and very interesting it is, too, with lots of clear evidence of who started which quarrel with whom, and how this or that amiable discussion slowly degenerated into bad blood.
But it also means I'm finding the odd interesting past unanswered question. I note the first two that seem within my capacity to respond to on this board:
Peter - You raised an eyebrow at the forename 'Mayo' among the Druitt schoolboys you traced in Wimborne. And Caz asked a later question about links between the Druitts and Macnaghten. The entry on 'Boultbee, Walter Ernest' in A-Z draws attention to the links between the Druitt, Elton and Mayo families, all of whom had representatives (in the Druitt case) or branches (in the Elton and Mayo cases) in Australia. I can vouch for this (which I think was discovered by Keith) as my godson Andrew Elton Mayo is from the NSW branch of the Mayos, and I have long known that his grandmother viewed his elder brother Simon with pride as the senior member of the last generation of Elton Mayos. I have a half-recollection that Keith found that the Melville family, for one of whom Macnaghten was named, also had some association with this tribe. But I may be quite wrong about that. In any case, Boultby, private secretary to Commissioners Warren, Monro and Bradford successively was married to the niece of a Mayo who retained strong ties with one of the Druitts. So there was a possible source for family gossip placed right in Scotland Yard.
In general, given some of the earlier discussion about Lionel Druitt, Howells and Skinner's work on him and the supposed Australian connection is far and away the best that has ever been done, and nobody has ever gone over the ground they covered to challenge or improve on it.
On the other hand, Jon, many moons ago you cited Howells and Skinner as possible evidence that Druitt had some connection with the famous Cambridge 'Apostles Club'. This, unlike the brilliant Howells and Skinner research on Lionel Druitt, is one of their worst speculations. To start with Druitt was an Oxford man and the Apostles are a Cambridge club who do not (unless things have changed recently) admit visiting Oxford members. To proceed, the Apostles are an intellectual discussion club (founded by Tennyson and his friend A.H. Hallam - the subject of Tennyson's 'In Memoriam') - and since Druitt took a third he was not much of an intellectual. (You could be thick as two short planks and get into Oxford in those days provided you had the money and especially if you were 'county' and so automatically invited to the big balls thrown for visiting royals. In the end the 'pass degree' was invented specifically for the well-born upper-class twits who were incapable of trying for honours). In the second place, Howells and Skinner wrongly deduced that the Apostles were/are a homosexual club. Tennyson's sentimental attachment to Hallam has been viewed by some as suspect, but there is nothing substantiated. The Apostles included a lot of homosexual members, especially in later years (Guy Burgess, for example, Wittgenstein, and the bisexual Maynard Keynes). But a leading light in the generation just after Druitt's time was the rampantly heterosexual Bertrand Russell. The Apostles was no more a homosexual group than any other late nineteenth century club of intellectual upper class Englishmen, which would include some natural homosexuals; some who were outgrowing the enforced restrictive practices of their schooldays; and perhaps the odd one or two making a unique experiment (as Winston Churchill is said to have done with Ivor Novello). Finally, Howells and Skinner note, as if it were suggestive of some association, the presence of a lot of former - (well, actual: membership continues after members have gone down from university) - Apostles and their friends with chambers in the same Walk as Druitt's. But with three floors of chambers; two sets to a floor and half a dozen barristers in each set, practising law in London is and was working in a sardine tin of other barristers, and certainly not necessarily having any acquaintance whatsoever with the other chaps whose names are painted up on adjacent, or even the same staircases. For six years I stayed in a flat in the Middle Temple every summer, and I never became acquainted with any of the lawyers I saw regularly on the stairs.
Finally, Neal Glass suggests that the alleged Sgt White encounter is as unreliable as an Enquirer piece. This is putting it a little strongly. It is clearly a journalistic piece masquerading as a reproduction of White's report: the florid language would have been rejected with contumely by his senior officers! But it may rest on something that happened. I cannot imagine why anyone suggests that the description fits Mitre Square. That had three entries, so it coold not have been sealed off by two men, and it was not behind Whitechapel Road. Castle Alley was. It was a cul-de-sac to wheeled traffic, with its northern end blocked by a bollard. At the same end, large-scale ordnance survey maps show the possiblility of a very narrow and tiny back-alley footpath leading in. One man at the bollard end would have been able to cover pedestrians entering by both access points. Still, This led Paul Begg to dismiss it as the site of the White story, and taking 'cul-de-sac' in very literal and absolute terms, propose Dutfield's Yard as a more likely place. But that is definitely not 'behind the Whitechapel Road'. In general, the position described suits Castle Alley very well, which is why I proposed Clay Pipe Alice's murder as probably lying behind th story.
To my mind one of its oddest and most unlikely features is the notion of Sgt White going round checking on men posted there. Assuming he was still CID, why would they have plain clothes men posted to watch Castle Alley over and above the regular appearance of the beat police man? It's even more suspicious that Alice McKenzie's body actually was found by a beat policeman who had just been routinely checked (that he was going about his duties properly) by his sergeant. This all sounds like the appropriation of somebody else's half-recalled experience tacked on to the memory of Sgt White. Of course, it would be crazy to rest any theory on it. But it doesn't mean that the whole thing belongs with the wilder fantasies of the Enquirer - let alone the Sport!
All the best,
Martin F |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Sunday, 13 May 2001 - 05:14 pm | | Dear Martin,
Any idea who issued the cheque (and how much) found on Druitt's body ? |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 13 May 2001 - 07:30 pm | | Thats interesting about Castle Alley , Martin. But let me ask a question : Surely Castle Alley was a better place to commit a Ripper murder than Mitre Square ? In fact , Mitre Square seems to me a pretty bad place to commit a murder - under the window of a policeman's house , on the beat of two constables effectively , three entrances to the yard , an area where every sound might echo to any passer-by , a site used by prostitutes who might stumble in on the dissection of a corpse etc etc.
In fact there must have been a better place to commit EACH of the first four Canonical murders - a little dark alley away from prying eyes , under a railway arch , behind crates and barrels or wherever.
Why choose these particular places ? I think the theory that they make a shape on the map when you ' join the dots ' has some merit here.
If you join the dots in the following order - Nichols , Chapman , Stride , Kelly , Eddowes - you get a big letter ' M '.
M for Montague perhaps ?
Simon |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Sunday, 13 May 2001 - 07:42 pm | | What about "Mary"... for Christ's sake?
Rosey :-) |
Author: Christopher-Michael DiGrazia
Sunday, 13 May 2001 - 10:19 pm | | Rosemary -
Far be it for me to step in ahead of the inimitable Mr Fido; however. . .the cheques found on Druitt's body were, according to the "Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Gazette" of January 5, 1889, drawn on the London and Provincial Bank for fifty and for 16 pounds. The "Southern Guardian" of January 1 says there was one cheque for 60 pounds. The "Dorset County Chronicle & Somersetshire Gazette" of January 10 says 1 cheque for 50 pounds.
Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.
CMD |
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