Over a hundred years of fascination with the sadistic serial
killer the police never caught has given rise to endless ideas,
stories and beliefs about his crimes and his identity. As Lacey
Flint, heroine of NOW YOU SEE ME says, 'Jack was a real man, but
he's become a myth.' Here is another of my favorite daft Jack
theories.
RIPPER MYTH 2: JACK WAS A TOFF
Common mythology will insist on portraying The Ripper as a
smartly dressed gentleman, complete with top hat, cane and long,
flowing, opera cloak. Often, he's pictured carrying a Gladstone
bag. Those in the toff camp argue that an elegant, well-spoken man
could more easily than a ruffian have lured women to their deaths.
They insist a smart carriage would have been an effective get-away
vehicle, unlikely to be stopped by the police. In fact, the
relatively few eye-witness accounts differ so much in terms of age,
appearance, dress, nationality, that it is impossible to form any
reliable idea of what Jack looked like. Certainly, there are as
many accounts of his being roughly dressed as there are of his
being respectable. As far as the carriage is concerned, several of
the murders occurred in places where it would have been impossible
to drive such a vehicle.
The Gladstone bag arises from two eye-witness accounts of
passers-by carrying 'shiny black bags'. Although nothing
concrete connects either bag-owner with the crimes, these reports
gave rise to a dozen or more black-bag stories, to the point where
mere ownership of such an article became cause for suspicion.
MONTAGUE JOHN DRUITT - RIPPER SUSPECT
The list of suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders is believed
to be over a hundred. At the time of the murders, and as the years
went by, anyone suspected of involvement in any sort of violent
knife crime was considered and more and more unsubstantiated
theories added to the pile. If we're talking prime suspects, those
against whom a reasonable case can be built, the number is closer
to a dozen. One of these would certainly have fitted in nicely with
the "Jack was a Toff" theory.
Sir Melville Macnaghten, one time second-in-command of the
Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland
Yard, wrote a confidential memorandum in 1894 in which he named
four suspects. Because of his position, and his knowledge of the
investigation, Macnaghten's views were taken seriously at the time
and have since passed into Ripperology. One of his suspects was
Montague John Druitt.
At the time of the murders, Druitt was 31. He was a barrister
from a good family and also assistant schoolmaster at a boarding
school in Blackheath. At the end of November 1888, he was
dismissed from his post at the school for unspecified "serious
trouble". On 31 December, his body was found floating in the Thames
at Chiswick.
On closer inspection, the case against Druitt is very weak.
Certainly he isn't taken seriously as a suspect by recent
commentators. For a start, he had alibis, of sorts, for two of the
murders. He is known to have played cricket in Dorset on 1
September, the day after Polly Nichols' murder; possible in theory
but the timing would have been very tight. On 8 September, the day
Annie Chapman was killed at 5.30am, he played cricket in Blackheath
at 11.30am. Again, very tight. There is nothing at all to connect
him with Whitechapel.
Mental health problems were known to run in Druitt's family and
Montague may not have been of entirely sound mind. On the other
hand, his suspected insanity could well have been nothing more than
homosexuality. It is generally believed that his sexual orientation
lay behind his dismissal from the school.
A man whose sexual inclinations ran towards men, even boys,
would have no motive for violent sexual attacks on women. On the
other hand, the threat of public disgrace and his apparent fears
for his own sanity (set down in a suicide note) would be ample
motive, in that day, for the taking of his own life.
NOT GUILTY (probably) MONTAGUE JOHN DRUITT
Montague Druitt was the great, great uncle of a friend of mine
and whilst I'd love to boast first-hand knowledge of the Ripper's
descendents, I'm afraid the evidence just isn't there. Montague
Druitt was almost certainly just a sad and troubled young man, born
in an intolerant age, whose suicide at the time the murders ceased
was enough to bring him to the attention of the police.