At time of the Whitechapel murders Druitt, a barrister and a teacher, was 31. He was put forward in 1894 as a suspect, along with Thomas Cutbush, Michael Ostrog and Aaron Kosminski, and these three I discuss below. The names of the four suspects appeared in a so-called confidential memorandum written by Sir Melville Macnaghten and dated 23 February 1894, more than five years after the murders began. Macnaghten joined the Metropolitan Police as Assistant Chief Constable and was second in command of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard in June 1889. There is no evidence of contemporary police suspicion of any of the four men at the time of the murders.
Although Macnaghten was not involved in the investigation of any of the murders, as a senior police officer in later years he would have been aware of ongoing and past enquiries into the murders. He would have been in a position to pass comment on persons who, several years after the murders ceased, had come to the notice of the police in relation to the murders, and would also have known the results of the subsequent enquiries. These would have been conducted by the handful of officers still seeking Jack the Ripper.
Macnaghten referred to Montague Druitt as follows in the memorandum:
I have always held strong opinions regarding him, and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become. The truth, however, will never be known, and did indeed, at one time lie at the bottom of the Thames, if my conjections be correct!
Mr M.J. Druitt a doctor of about 41 years of age & of fairly good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller’s Court murder, and whose body was found floating in the Thames on 31st Dec [1888]: i.e. 7 weeks after the said murder. The body was said to have been in the water for a month, or more – on it was found a season ticket between Blackheath & London. From private information I have little doubt that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was sexually insane.
I looked closely at the background to Macnaghten’s statement that ‘from private information I have little doubt but that his own family suspected him to have been the murderer’, and it was obvious that he had no evidence at all. There are no clues as to the identity of the informant to whom he refers, but, from the way his statement is worded, it would seem as if it was a Druitt family member. Yet, if one or more of Druitt’s relations had informed Macnaghten that they suspected he might have been the Ripper, would Macnaghten not rather have said he had evidence that Druitt’s family believed him to be the killer?
I found many discrepancies in Macnaghten’s notes on Druitt. He stated that Druitt lived with his family, but records show that he lived alone at 9 Eliot Place, Blackheath, south-east London. He stated that Druitt had committed suicide around 10 November 1888, three weeks before he is thought to have done so. (The date of Druitt’s death is not confirmed, because when the body was examined no more than an approximate time for his suicide could be given as it was in a state of decomposition from being in the water for some time.) Macnaghten also stated that Druitt was about 41 at the time of his death, but, in fact, he was 31. Finally, he describes Druitt as a doctor, when he was a barrister and schoolmaster.
As to Druitt’s appearance, he had a moustache, as did the man seen with victims if the Ripper, according to some witnesses. He was also of respectable appearance, always known to have been well dressed. One witness described the suspect as having the appearance of a sailor. Another described seeing a man of ‘shabby genteel appearance’; others described the man as respectable.
However, my theory that the killer did not live in Whitechapel did not totally rule out Druitt as he was living in Blackheath during the murders. If he was the killer, he could have used that address as a ‘base’ for the murders. However, Blackheath is too far to walk from Whitechapel and would have required a journey by train or horse-drawn cab. Alternatively, Druitt could have used his barrister’s chambers at King’s Bench Walk, just west of the City, within walking distance of Whitechapel and in the direction the Ripper took after killing Eddowes.
In Druitt’s defence, he was a keen cricketer and is known to have played in Dorset on 1 September, the day after Mary Ann Nichols’s murder. Could he have had time to commit the murder and be down in Dorset for the start of play mid-morning? I suspect not.
On 8 September, the day of Annie Chapman’s murder, Druitt played cricket in Blackheath at 11.30am. So could he have killed Chapman at 5.30am and had time to catch a train to Blackheath, remove his bloodstained clothes, wash, eat breakfast and be on the cricket field by 11.30am. It’s possible but very unlikely.
There is another issue to consider: it is believed that Druitt was a homosexual and the reason for his dismissal from the boys’ school where he taught was his engaging in homosexual acts with boys, the disgrace of which drove him to suicide. If we accept that he was homosexual, would a homosexual commit crimes against women in this brutal way? The answer is no.
The truth is that the only ‘evidence’ to suggest he was the killer came out in 1894 and it can be said that this is not evidence in the true sense. So why were the investigating officers not made aware of this at the time by the person who initially suspected Druitt? I would have thought that anyone with information leading to the apprehension of the killer would have been only too willing be a part of apprehending one of the most notorious killers that London had ever seen.
This leads me to believe that perhaps Macnaghten was basing his claims on hearsay rather than private information he himself had received. He did not join the police force until 1889 and did not write his memorandum until 1894. So could his reason for writing of his suspicions several years after the murders be the possibility of financial gain? Perhaps more evidence or documents are still to be found that will shed some light on Macnaghten’s motives for suggesting Montague Druitt was Jack the Ripper. After all, apparently he stated that he had been in possession of other documentation about the murders which, for reasons he kept to himself, he destroyed.
So was Druitt the killer? Well, if it is accepted that the two murders after Mary Kelly’s were not committed by the same killer/s, he cannot be discounted totally (as Coles and McKenzie were murdered after Druitt himself had died). However, if they were all by the same figure, he was not the killer of all or any of the women.
Druitt’s suicide and the fact that the police closed the inquiry in early January 1889 make him a convenient scapegoat. I do not believe he was the killer of all or any of the women. I can find no evidence or any motives to support the theory that he was the Ripper. In fact, the only links with the Ripper are his likeness to the vague descriptions of the man seen with Ripper victims and the suggestion made by an ageing police officer several years later.