The Magical Thinking of Jonathan Hainsworth

SUMMONING UP THE MAGICIAN

It's a well-known fact that if you type the name "Macnaghten" into the Casebook Forum three times, Jonathan Hainsworth, will appear.

Sure enough, on 24th October 2025, during a discussion about Macnaghten's 1894 memorandum, and the suspect Thomas Cutubush, Hainsworth, via the medium of his loyal backscratching postmaster, Mad Mike "Howler" Hawley, emerged to treat us, off topic, to some more of his famous delusional, and indeed demented, magical thinking about Druitt. And what he posted was startling:

"From his first day, Macnaghten studied the files on The Ripper case. He had personal copies made of the grisly photos of the victims. It took him a year but he finally tracked down Tom Bulling as the reporter who had faked the "Dear Boss" letter. In the files he read about the dozens upon dozens of suspects against whom there was no hard evidence.

In doing so Mac spotted a name he recognized.

A nephew of the late, famous Dr Robert Druitt was arrested in 1887 for allegedly trying to stab an East End "fallen woman". The victim dropped the accusation because either they were lying, or fearful, or were quietly bought off. This young gentleman, Montague Druitt, a talented barrister and cricketer was by 1889 deceased - he had killed himself in late 1888. Since there were subsequent East End murders which were probably by "Jack", then Mr Druitt had the most unbreakable alibi."

An extraordinary piece of new information!

The nephew of the "famous" Dr Robert Druitt could be none other than Montague John Druitt. Hence, from the files at Scotland Yard, we were being told, Melville Macnaghten had literally spotted the name of Montague Druitt on some kind of official record as someone who had been arrested in 1887 for allegedly trying to stab an East End prostitute.

This was amazing news.

Sadly, no one in the Forum seemed to notice that Hainsworth had revealed the most important fact about Druitt to have emerged since he was first publicly identified as a suspect about sixty years ago.

Hainsworth's post was totally ignored.

Sixteen posts followed but not a single one responded to Hainsworth and his astonishing revelation.

In his desperate cry for attention, Hainsworth got Hawley to post a silly claim that there is no such thing as "suspectology" after someone had mentioned the word. This got him some of the desired limelight but still no one was swooning over the fantastic new Druitt evidence.

Miffed by the silence, the next day, in another thread about Cutbush ("Cutbush and Cutbush?"), he complained, via Hawley: "We expect our posts to be ignored by most of the Whitechapel Cognoscenti". Ah, poor baby.

So the next day, still craving attention, he tried again in the "Cutbush and Cutbush?" thread), posting on 26th October (#54) the startling new explanation as to how Druitt had become a suspect in the first place:

"The talented young barrister (sic) had ended up on a very long list of possible 'Jacks' because he had been arrested in 1887 for stabbing an East End sex worker which he fulsomely denied. She had dropped the accusation and so this nephew of the late, still famous Dr. Robert Druitt had wriggled out of a potentially damaging scandal."

Once again, this was stated as absolute, confirmed fact. There was even the additional supporting detail that Druitt had fulsomely denied being involved in the attack. No source, however, was being provided by Hainsworth, so no one, as Hainsworth well knew, was able to check it out. It was brand new information but everyone had to take Hainsworth's word that it was true and accurate.

And still there was silence from the Forum members.

At last, back in the original Cutbush thread, on 27th October, some three days after Hainsworth had first posted his astounding new claim, Casebook member "Fiver" asked him if there was a source for Druitt having allegedly stabbed a woman.

The answer from Hainsworth, via Hawley the next day was:

"Two other researchers whose name I don't have permission to use, as yet, found newspaper reports of a "barrister" arrested in 1887 for allegedly stabbing an East End sex worker, but the case fizzled out."

Somewhat sheepishly, he admitted:

"The accused gentleman's name is not mentioned"

Alarm bells started to ring. Was this entire story nothing more than a classic example of Hainsworth's magical thinking? (Spoiler alert: The answer is yes).

Thankfully, it wasn't difficult to find out. Hainsworth had, unwittingly, provided enough information to make it possible to locate the newspaper reports in question which proved that everything he had said about those reports was untrue.

In short, according to the very newspaper reports on which Hainsworth was relying, no barrister was arrested in 1887 for allegedly stabbing a sex worker, while the sex worker (assuming she was one) was not an East End sex worker.

One does need to let that sink in. At a time when no one other than the two researchers he mentioned had seen the newspaper reports being referred to, Hainsworth was stating things as facts which were not facts at all. They were nonsensical claims which were not supported in any way by the historical documents he was referring to. Even worse, at the time he posted the claims, it wasn't possible for anyone to check or verify them.

The actual story, as it turned out, was that a woman called Minnie Cameron, who had been found in a pool of blood during the early hours one morning in Southwark in September 1887, claimed to have been attacked by an unnamed police officer, before changing her story to say she'd been stabbed by an unnamed barrister friend of hers before saying that she didn't actually know who had attacked her. Around this vague and inconsistent account, Hainsworth built a magical fantasy in his mind that a barrister had been arrested for stabbing an East End prostitute. And then, around that fake story, he built a further magical fantasy in his mind that this barrister was Montague Druitt. A further fantasy involved Druitt expressly denying his involvement in the assault. Yet another fantasy involved Druitt's family pressurizing the woman to drop the charge. After that, he built an additional magical fantasy in his over-excited head that Melville Macnaghten had seen Druitt's name mentioned in a police file about the assault.

After the newspaper reports were located, and Hainsworth was challenged as to his interpretation of them, he admitted that the sex worker in question was not based in the East End. Meekly, by way of mea culpa, he bumbled that he was, "mis-remembering the proximity of this sex worker's attack to Druitt's kill-zone rather than his primary place of work". So that's alright then.

Astonishingly, he doubled down on his claim that the barrister had been arrested, even though the newspaper reports said nothing of the sort, and, if those reports were correct, the victim never even named the barrister in question, so that an arrest would have been impossible. His bonkers reasoning for insisting not only that the barrister in the story had been arrested but that the barrister was none other than Druitt was that "somehow Montague Druitt's name came to police attention", and so, hey, if we're making stuff up, why not let it be through this attack? If we wish hard enough, and the Wish Fairy hears us, the things we invent in our head could magically come true.

That is not a proper way of treating a historical source. Further, there is no actual, proper evidence, or reason to think, that Druitt's name ever came to police attention prior to Macnaghten learning (in the 1890s?) of the private suspicions of a Druitt family member, or members, that Druitt had committed the crimes.

To the extent that the fact of Druitt having been known to the police in 1888 and/or 1889 can be inferred from the past tense claim in the draft version of Macnaghten's memorandum (not repeated in the final version) that Druitt was one of three men "against whom police held very reasonable suspicion", an obvious explanation for this is provided by Sims who tells us that, immediately after his disappearance in December 1888, family members passed on their suspicions about Druitt being the Whitechapel murderer to the police, leading to Druitt's photograph being shown to and recognized by East End prostitutes as someone who frequented the Whitechapel area at night during the period of the murders (and, indeed, the story goes, on the very nights of them). If that story was true, we don’t need any further reason as to why Druitt would have come to police attention in 1888 (if he actually did) and, surely, if Druitt had been arrested in 1887 for stabbing a prostitute in the neck, Macnaghten would have included this pretty important fact in both his 1894 report for the Home Secretary and his book.

According to Hainsworth, the idea that Druitt was arrested in 1887:

"would then make sense of Macnaghten's cryptic revelation in his 1914 memoirs that some of Druitt's particulars - e.g. of an incriminating nature - came to Scotland Yard's attention in 1888…",

When one sees Hainsworth referring to a "cryptic revelation", loud alarm bells should ring because it usually means that he's invented something out of whole cloth. Sure enough, nowhere do we find anything said by Macnaghten in his 1914 memoirs to indicate that some of Druitt's particulars came to Scotland Yard's attention in 1888. Not a word. On the contrary, Macnaghten said in his memoirs that facts pointing to Druitt's guilt, "were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer." It's the direct opposite of what Hainsworth is claiming! Whatever cryptic revelation Hainsworth has seen in the 1914 memoirs is invisible to normal human eyes.

THE BIG IRONY

I'm going to deal in some more detail with the entire story of the Cameron stabbing but I first want to discuss the extraordinary irony of this situation which everyone seems to have missed.

It will be recalled that Macnaghten stated in his report that Druitt was a 41-year-old doctor (or "said to be a doctor" in his final version) when he was, in fact, a 31-year-old barrister and schoolteacher. According to Hainsworth, it was impossible for Macnaghten to have made a mistake about Druitt's age and profession. Indeed, Hainsworth can't admit this because, in his mind, Macnaghten was utterly obsessed with Druitt and would have known everything about him down to the very last detail, being convinced that he was Jack the Ripper So, according to Hainsworth, Macnaghten lied in his memo for the Secretary of State about Druitt's profession and age in order to protect his identity even though Druitt was named in the report (so it doesn't make sense) and even though Macnaghten was expecting that the Home Secretary would use his report as the basis of a statement to the House of Commons.

But hold on, isn't Hainsworth just as obsessed with Druitt today as he thinks Macnaghten was in his lifetime? When it comes to accessing information, Hainsworth would have had the 1887 newspaper reports relating to the attack on Minnie Cameron available to him on his computer within seconds at a single click of a mouse or button. Yet, when making a public post on the Casebook Forum, he must have been posting from faulty memory, without having re-read the reports, because he evidently thought in his own mind that the woman he believed Druitt had attacked was an East End prostitute, even though the reports clearly state that she lived in Newington, south London.

If Hainsworth can make such a mistake in 2025, which he has admitted it was, why not Macnaghten in 1894, at a time when accessing any kind of information, if held by the police, would likely have been difficult and cumbersome, probably involving a long walk to a different office, perhaps even to a different building? There were, after all, no photocopiers around. If Macnaghten had once read a police report about Druitt's suicide, he would probably have been relying on his memory to recall details of that report.

The funny thing is that I also found the 1887 newspaper reports of an alleged assault by a barrister after Hainsworth posted about it and was puzzled that the sex worker was not from the East End and that there was no report of any arrest. I wondered if it was possible that Hainsworth was deliberately putting out false information in order to try and throw anyone off the trail who was seeking to find the newspaper reports in the same way that he believes Macnaghten was attempting to throw the Home Secretary and others off the trail of the real Montague Druitt by lying about his age and profession. But, no, the explanation for the false East End element of Hainsworth's post was far more mundane. A simple mistake. Just like the explanation for Macnaghten describing Druitt as a doctor was likely to have been a simple mistake. Hainsworth's explanation for saying that Druitt was arrested was just bizarre (not just because the reports don't even mention Druitt) but it was still a mistake because it wasn't possible for him to make such a statement on the available facts.

If Hainsworth can make such serious mistakes of this nature about a subject on which he has written at least three books, has all the supporting documents easily to hand on a computer, and must regard himself as a expert, why could Macnaghten (a busy Scotland Yard official who would, no doubt, have been working on many other matters at the time he wrote his 1894 report), also not have made some minor errors, especially if he wrote his report from memory of things he'd been told years earlier?

The irony dealt with, let's have a closer look at the 1887 stabbing incident.

MINNIE CAMERON INCIDENT

It is said that the Minnie Cameron incident can somehow be connected to Montague Druitt because it happened close to Druitt's chambers in the Temple, or at least within a relatively short walk from those chambers. To my mind, this is a ludicrous argument.

Firstly, virtually all barristers in London had their chambers in that small area of London, as they do today. The big three barristers' inns of court: the Temple (inner and middle), Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn were, and remain, located just a short walk from Blackfriars bridge where Minnie appears to have been attacked.

Secondly, the incident occurred during the middle of the night. Why would Druitt, or, indeed, any other barrister, have been lurking around the general area of their office at that time? Those offices may be described as "chambers" but they were not residential chambers. The fact is that any barrister with chambers at Temple, Gray's Inn or Lincoln's Inn (i.e. just about all of them) who had been physically present at those chambers during the day of 22 September could, at the time of night Minnje was attacked, have been anywhere in London, so the proximity of the attack to those chambers doesn't mean very much.

Thirdly, at the time of the incident, it was the legal summer vacation, known as "the long vacation", which, in 1887, started on 13th August and ended on 24th October. There were no full hearings in the High Court, Royal Courts of Justice, during September when only urgent business was dealt with, so most barristers would have remained out of London until the start of the new Michaelmas term in late October. As the London Gossip column of the Sheffield Evening News said on 2 September 1887: "The Long Vacation has set in. The judges and counsel have fled the town". The same newspaper commented on 14 August 1891:

"London is a little quieter because the long vacation has set in. The day that sees the rush northwards for the moors sees also the departure of the lawyers from the Temple and Lincoln's Inn, which for some weeks will be pervaded with a holy calm….it will be nearly ten weeks before the bustle of the courts again commences".

The Sheffield Independent of 17 September 1885 noted:

"Now is what the lawyers call the long vacation, and judges and barristers alike are spending it by the seaside, on the moors, in the highlands, wherever they can bring back the health and vigour which they lose in stuffy and ill-ventilated courts."

Similarly, an article entitled "The Long Vacation" published in The Saturday Review of 25 August 1877, said:

"The only recognized representatives of the law left in town are the solicitors, the police-magistrates, a casual County Court judge or two, and the long suffering Masters and Judges who preside over the bear-gardens known as Judges' Chambers".

It also referred to: "the few forlorn barristers who flit through the courts, half-ashamed of the confessed lack of practice which keeps them about the place out of season, but yet fondly clinging to the hope of picking up some of the scanty legal crumbs which the vacation affords".

With Montague having had another job as a schoolteacher, there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to have been one of the few forlorn barristers left in their chambers during September trying to pick up some of the scanty vacation legal crumbs. As at 23 September 1887, the winter term at Valentine's school would surely have already commenced. Certainly, for the Blackheath Proprietary School, another boarding school in Blackheath in 1877, their winter term began on 13 September 1887 (Kentish Mercury, 9 September 1877).

It should be said that many specialist criminal barristers worked during September because the criminal courts still sat and, in this respect, it's interesting to note that Minnie Cameron's story was that, shortly before the attack, she had been drinking with some other women at a public house in the Old Bailey, very close to the Central Criminal Court. If Minnie Crompton was a prostitute, does this mean she operated in the area of the Old Bailey? If so, did she have regular or irregular clients who were barristers?

It so happens that Thursday 22nd September was the last day of the September session of the Old Bailey. Was it the typical practice for the male lawyers, barristers, ushers, clerks, reporters, transcribers, perhaps even judges, from the Old Bailey to frequent the local pubs in the evening after court, especially on the last day of a session? That would, one assumes, have made it an attractive location to sex workers for picking up clients.

Indeed, might not that fact, in itself, explain why Minnie claimed to have been attacked by a barrister? Let's think for a moment. The suspicion is that she was attacked by a man while she was walking the streets as a prostitute. That man might have been a client or a complete stranger. Either way, the one thing that Minnie can't or won't admit to when questioned is what she was doing at the time she was stabbed, i.e. walking the streets looking for trade. So we can see that, while giving a false name of "Millicent Crampton" (per the Echo of 23 September 1887), she claimed to have been attacked at 1am in Ludgate Hill after leaving the area of Old Bailey, whereas according to the press reports, the attack must have happened some hours later than this, at a further distance from the Old Bailey, on Blackfriars Bridge. I have no idea if the bridge was a location where prostitutes met clients but one assumes she changed the time and location to make it seem like she was simply walking home following a night out rather than patrolling the streets (and bridges) looking for punters.

So the first thing she says to cover up what she was doing was that she was attacked by a policeman. Then she changes that story and says it was a friend who was a barrister. I note that R.J. Palmer has argued that is such an unusual lie that it's likely to be true but I find it hard to agree with this. As I've already said, she may well have had barristers who were her friends or clients from frequenting the public houses around the Old Bailey so that in saying her attacker was a barrister friend it gave what she was doing at the time – i.e. walking along the street with a barrister friend - respectability. She wasn't, in other words, attacked by a common man while she worked as a prostitute during the middle of the night at 4am. She was attacked by a barrister friend as she left a pub after drinking with friends at 1am.

In any event, what is certain is that she changed her story again and said she was attacked from behind by someone she didn't recognize, which may indeed be the true version. The fact that she first claimed to have been struck by a policeman's truncheon might suggest that she never saw the knife that her attacker wielded, only feeling the blow.

But even assuming that her attacker was a barrister – whether friend or client – why should we think for one second that it was Montague Druitt? No description was provided by Minnie. There's no reason to think that Druitt knew Minnie. As I've said, pretty much all barristers operated in a small area of London, so there was nothing special connecting Druitt in particular with this assault as opposed to any other barrister. And, of course, the man was never named in any of the reports.

Well an explanation has been offered by R.J. Palmer on the Casebook Forum that, within the context of Druitt having been named as a suspect for the Whitechapel murders of 1888, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence that, "a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister". To my mind, this is a circular argument which depends on Druitt actually being Jack the Ripper. For, if he wasn't Jack the Ripper, there's no reason to think he attacked this woman in 1887. Sure, if he was Jack the Ripper, it's theoretically possible that he attacked a woman in 1887 but it really is the thinnest of gruel to say that Minnie's barrister friend was him, even if he was the Ripper. As I say, though, if he wasn't the Ripper there's just no reason at all to think it was him, especially as everything points to the fact that Minnie never identified her attacker to the authorities so that it's not likely to be as a result of this attack that he came to police attention and was included on a later lists of suspects for the Ripper, which would, at least, be a reason, albeit not a particularly good one, for thinking that it might be Druitt.

After all, there were other dodgy barristers (or at least people calling themselves barristers) prowling around London. What about this guy, Léon Loin, who is alleged to have assaulted a woman in Westminster a few months after the Minnie Cameron incident, in December 1887 (per the Echo of 23 December 1887):

If Minnie had been attacked by a barrister, however, and it wasn't Léon Loin, her reference to having been at the Old Bailey makes it seem likely that the man was a criminal barrister who operated in the Old Bailey as opposed to a barrister who operated in the Royal Courts of Justice. Druitt conducted criminal work but mostly in the Western Circuit Assizes (which did not sit during September 1887). He did make one appearance at the Old Bailey but that was in 1888. He is not recorded as a barrister who appeared at the Central Criminal Court on 22 September 1887 which was the day of the attack on Minnie. So, if we're looking at the odds, they are stacked against it being Druitt.

And think about it. What if Minnie had claimed to have been attacked by a friend of hers who was schoolteacher. Would that have been Druitt too? If she'd said she'd been attacked by a friend of hers who was a cricketer. Druitt? And what if she'd said it was a doctor or a medical student. Hainsworth, in his Jesus-like trance where he decides everything, would have assured us that this must have been Druitt too because Druitt was believed to have been a doctor - and "doctor", in his world, if not the world the rest of us inhabit, also meant "medical student".

A MAN ARRESTED?

What about Hainsworth's claim that Druitt was arrested?

It's worth mentioning that Hainsworth is obsessed with the notion of Druitt's arrest. He's told me that he thinks Druitt was the "highly respected doctor" from Brixton supposedly arrested by PC Robert Spicer near Brick Lane in 1888 even though Druitt was not a doctor, let alone a highly respected one and did not live in Brixton. Now he thinks he was also arrested in 1887!! But, as I've mentioned, the newspaper reports give no hint of anyone having been arrested as a result of Minnie's allegation. Moreover, it was literally reported that Minnie "seemed unwilling to give the police such information as would lead to her assailant's arrest." (Lloyds Illustrated Newspaper, 2 October 1887). This would have made any arrest impossible.

And we need to think about this for a moment because an arrest in 1888 was not like it is today where suspects get arrested, questioned for 24 hours while in custody under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act before a charging decision is made by the Crown Prosecution Service or the suspect is released on police bail pending further enquiries. There was none of that.

While, in 1887, the police could arrest a suspect without a warrant for a felony offence of aggravated assault which they had not themselves witnessed, they still needed reasonable grounds to do so. It is extremely unlikely, in my opinion, in the circumstances reported whereby a woman had first identified a policeman as her attacker, that the police would have arrested a barrister for a crime which neither a police officer nor any other member of the public had personally witnessed, simply on the woman's word, without any other supporting or incriminating evidence against the barrister (e.g. a bloody knife in his possession or a confession), even if the woman had named that barrister (which, as we've seen, she doesn't appear to have done), while she remained in hospital.

I think that Hainsworth has probably forgotten, or is unaware, that if the police had arrested someone for the attack on Minnie, that individual would have had to have been taken before a magistrate as soon as possible. So there was no period of investigation and questioning after an arrest to build up a case. They had to be sure before they made an arrest that there was sufficient evidence to present to a magistrate. With the victim still in hospital and thus not able to appear before a magistrate, I find it very difficult to believe, as I've said, that the police would have been willing to make an arrest, and present information themselves to a magistrate about the assault, after the victim had told a false story about having been attacked by a police officer. But, if they had made an arrest, Druitt would quickly have been taken to a police court and charged before a magistrate with the offence which would have been public and reported, given the press interest in the story. That there was no such charge must mean there was no arrest. None of Hainsworth's magical thinking can change this fact.

MACNAGHTEN FIRED

Another claim by Hainsworth from his original post of 24th October 2025 was this beauty:

"Macnaghten believed that if he been on the Force the year before - and not been rudely fired by Warren before he even started - he would have, as a favour to a close friend, checked and presumably cleared M. J. Druitt. Such a connection to the East End horrors could only do reputational damage to both prominent, respectable families.."

Hainsworth puts himself forward as an expert on Macnaghten yet thinks he was "fired by Warren".

This isn't correct.

Even leaving aside the fact that you can't be fired from a job for which you haven't yet been officially hired, Warren had no power to fire Macnaghten. It was the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, alone who was responsible for appointing Macnaghten to the job of Assistant Chief Constable of the C.I.D. and the Home Secretary alone who who had the power to cancel his appointment. Having originally authorized Macnaghten's appointment, after Warren had recommended him for the position, the Home Secretary changed his mind before the appointment had taken effect (after Warren had withdrawn his recommendation). Although Macnaghten had understood from his friend Monro that he would be appointed to the job, he soon discovered that this would not be the case and his appointment was never made formal by being gazetted. He was never employed at Scotland Yard while Warren was the Commissioner, and it follows that he was never fired by him, or anyone else.

That aside, there is an odd note in Hainsworth's above-quoted statement. He claims without any evidence that Macnaghten believed that if he had been employed by Scotland Yard in 1888 he would have checked "and presumably cleared M.J. Druitt". Why on earth would Macnaghten have thought he would have cleared Druitt while, at the very same time, strongly suspecting him of being Jack the Ripper? It doesn’t make any sense. Surely the very opposite must be true and that Mac believed that if he'd been employed by Scotland Yard in 1888 he would have arrested and charged Druitt for being Jack the Ripper.

THE MAJENDIE CONNECTION

Hainsworth's post of 24th October 2025 continued:

"Then in 1891 came the shocking revelation from Majendie. He had been approached by a distressed Isabella Druitt, the widow of Dr Robert and Montie's aunt who divulged that their deceased member had indeed been "Jack the Ripper". The aunt had approached Dr Robert Anderson via the Earl of Crawford (his sister was married into the Majendies) without divulging her name. Anderson had assured her the maniac was still alive and stalking victims, so no need to worry. She then approached her son, Charles' Tory MP, in West Dorset, Henry Farquharson, trying once more to alert the authorities not to hang the wrong man - yet without the family name becoming known and ruined."

Look at all the things stated as facts for which there is no evidence.

1. Majendie told Macnaghten about Druitt in 1891. Not a shred of evidence to support the idea.
   

2. Majendie had been approached by Isabella Druitt. Not a shred of evidence to support the idea.
   

3. Druitt's aunt had approached Anderson via the Earl of Crawford. Not a shred of evidence that Druitt's aunt, or any other member of Druitt's family, was the person referred to by Crawford in his letter to Anderson.

   
   

4. Anderson had told Druitt's aunt that Jack the Ripper was still alive. Not a shred of evidence to support this assertion.

   
   

5. Isabella Druitt told Henry Farquharson about Montague. No evidence to support this assertion.

SEXUAL INSANITY

Of the 1887 stabbing incident, Hainsworth posted on 28th October 2025:

"The accused gentleman's name is not mentioned. But it would explain how Druitt's name ended up on Ripper list the following year, and why it was treated as fact by his family and Macnaghten that he suffered from sexual insanity, e.g. gained erotic fulfilment (sic) from committing acts of violence."

Where does that definition of sexual insanity come from? Has he simply invented it?

In his 1896 petition from Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde wrote (referring to himself in the third person):

"He is quite conscious of the approach of an insanity that will not be confined to one portion of the nature merely but will extend over all alike, and his desire, his prayer, is that his sentence may be remitted now, so that he may be taken abroad by his friends and may put himself under medical care so that the sexual insanity from which he suffers may be cured."

I'm pretty sure that Wilde did not gain erotic fulfilment from committing acts of violence. What he meant by "sexual insanity" was that he was homosexual.

Whether that is what Macnaghten, or his informant, meant when he wrote in his draft memo about Druitt that, "it was alleged that he was sexually insane", I have no idea, but we cannot simply conclude that it meant that he "gained erotic fulfilment from committing acts of violence" simply because that is what Hainsworth has decided it must mean.

LORD ORSAM GETS A MENTION!

To my surprise I am name-checked in a subsequent post by Hainsworth on 27th October 2025 (#57 of "Cutbush and Cutbush?). He didn't manage spell my surname correctly but I've corrected that in the transcript below:

"There are brilliant writers on this subject who regard our research and theorising to be fresh and interesting, but by no means any sort of a slam dunk, including R. J. Palmer, Tom Wescott, Mike Hawley (thanks again, mate), David Barrat (who whilst scathing accepts our interpretation of Act 3) and Jonathan Menges."

Did I read that correctly. David Barrat "accepts our interpretation of Act 3". Really? Pray do remind me what Act 3 is again. Well, as Hainsworth defines it, it's:

"From 1891, and in 1894, and semi-officially from 1898 to 1917 the Druitt solution was broadcast to the public, albeit a discreet - and self-serving - mix of untraceable, libel-proofed fact and fiction."

To say that I accept this is quite wrong. In fact, if anything, the reverse is true because I believe that, in most of the examples Hainsworth has produced, the suspect in question is probably not Druitt. It's a further example of magical thinking by Hainsworth to suggest that I accept his interpretation of the sources between 1898 and 1917 when I most certainly do not.

This should have been evident from the comment in my September 2023 blog post A Beautiful Mind: Jonathan Hainsworth and the Power of Imagination in which I wrote:

"Where I part company with Hainsworth is in his remarkably obsessive belief that, under the influence of Macnaghten, coded, cryptic or hidden messages about Druitt's guilt were being placed in the press between 1891 and 1898 and then in print in 1905 (with further somewhat cryptic or obscure messages appearing in print in 1910 and 1914, albeit not both in respect of Druitt). I think he's gone badly wrong about this, and I don't even understand what real motive Macnaghten & co could possibly have had for doing it although, even if Hainsworth were right in all cases, I can't see how it would make any difference to anything or even really matter."

You can see that I was expressly disagreeing with him over the very part of his theory which he now seems to think that I was agreeing with.

Truly magical thinking.

The rest of Hainsworth's post (which was too long to fit into the above screenshot) has him stating his speculations as fact, such as saying that Macnaghten was responsible for Anderson believing that Kosminski had died in an asylum when there is zero supporting evidence to this effect.

THE SIMS POEM

Hainsworth (for it appears to have been his words) was back in a more suitable thread, "Druitt and Monro", posting this on 31st October (#3), via Hawley, with some spelling mistakes corrected by me in the transcript:

"Among Christine's many discoveries was that in 1893, Sims, a socialist, had written a partisan poem damning Farquharson as a bully and a gossip, and also condemns him in a comedic way for accusing innocent people of being "Jack the Ripper". It is the only other reference at the time to Farquharson being the "West of England" MP. The Hainsworths interpret this as misdirection and propaganda because, under the radar, Macnaghten and Sims completely agreed with Farquharson about Druitt."

This is false. Both Christine and Hainsworth have misunderstood the poem. In that poem, Sims did not condemn Farquharson for "accusing innocent people of being "Jack the Ripper"". There is no such condemnation in the poem. The Hainsworths have imagined it. Farquharson was also not condemned in the poem as being "a bully and a gossip". This is an invention. The purpose of the poem was solely to comedically criticize a specific and novel legal defence adopted by Farquharson in a libel case. Nothing more, nothing less. Hainsworth knows this very well because I've explained it to him but he refuses to focus on the words of the poem (preferring to pretend be able to read between lines which don’t exist) and continues regardless to propagate these falsehoods. I guess he likes to call it an "interpretation" of the poem but it isn't a proper interpretation because it has no basis in the words or meaning of the poem. It is a misunderstanding.

HAWLEY'S HOWLERS

Don't ask me why Michael Hawley, a proponent of Tumblety's candidature as the Ripper, started batting for Hainsworth in a vomit-inducing unholy alliance, instead of merely acting as a postman when he clearly doesn't think for one second that Druitt was Jack the Ripper. But Hawley and Hainsworth are strange birds of a feather. Both magical thinkers who are happy to make claims about their different suspects which are untethered to evidence or facts. It's bad enough when Hawley does it with Tumblety, but now he's doing it with Druitt too.

On 31st October, Hawley took on the tawdry role of acting as salesman or promoter for Hainsworth's book, promising that it contains all manner of exciting revelations. Hence, he posted in the 'Was Druitt recognised by sex workers...' thread (#16):

"I have the Hainsworths' book right in front of me, the US edition: "The Escape of Jack the Ripper - The Truth about the Cover-up and His Flight from Justice" (Regnery, 2021) - which showcases their latest discoveries" adding, "I suggest you get your hands on it, somehow, because you will then have all of your questions answered and then some."

Here are the "discoveries" (in red) which, according to Hawley, Hainsworth is supposed to reveal in his book, with my commentary:

Yes, Druitt was a medical student who dropped out.

Well, if you were to buy the US edition of Hainsworth's book, you will certainly be told that Druitt was a medical student who dropped out but not a single ounce of evidence will be presented to support this speculation.

Yes, Druitt worked for the Oxford House charity in the East End.

No evidence is provided in Hainsworth's book to support this claim which is speculation based solely on the fact that barristers of King's Bench Walk were invited in April 1886 to volunteer to help at Oxford House in Bethnal Green. In fact, in their book, even the Hainsworths don't quite go so far as Hawley, simply saying: "We believe Montague had an involvement with Oxford House". It's not a terrible theory but there's just no evidence that Druitt was at the 1886 meeting or that he did, in fact, volunteer to do charity work at Oxford House. He might have done but to state that he did work for this charity is magical thinking on the part of Hawley. Saying you believe, or more accurately speculate, that Druitt worked for the Oxford House charity in the East End is one thing but quite another to say that he "worked for" this charity.

Yes, the Vicar's Ripper is Druitt confirmed by Macnaghten

This one is absolutely false. Macnaghten never once commented on the Vicar's Ripper. The only stated response from the police through an unidentified official at the time of the Vicar's story in 1899, according to the press, was to say that the Vicar's Ripper was NOT Jack the Ripper. If anyone at Scotland Yard was going to have been commenting on a press story about the Ripper murders in 1898 (to the extent that it was a police official from Scotland Yard who spoke to the press), it was probably going to have been the Assistant Commissioner of the C.I.D., Robert Anderson. If, however, that police source had, oddly, been Macnaghten (for which there is no evidence), or anyone else in the police who thought that Druitt was Jack the Ripper, the source was doing the direct opposite of confirming that the Vicar's Ripper was Druitt. They were, in fact, saying that the Vicar's Ripper was not Druitt.

The same is true of Sims who said in his Referee column of 22 January 1899 that the Vicar's suspect could not have been Jack the Ripper. So, even if (as Hainsworth seems to believe) Sims was nothing more than a puppet who parroted Macnaghten's views verbatim in his Referee column, this would mean that Macnaghten had denied both that the Vicar's suspect was the Ripper and that the Vicar's Ripper was Druitt.

How Hawley thinks that Hainsworth provides any evidence that Macnaghten confirmed that the Vicar's Ripper was Druitt, when he is never known to have spoken of the Vicar's Ripper, but, if he did so anonymously or through a proxy, denied that it was Druitt, is beyond me.

Yes, Charles Druitt is the Reverend who took Montague's confession.

This is pure speculation unsupported by any evidence at all. It assumes that the anonymous north country vicar who claimed that he was told that the Ripper had confessed before dying (although not stated to be by suicide) was talking about Montague Druitt even though none of the details supplied by the vicar about that individual are known to match Druitt and some of them, such as him having been a surgeon, clearly do not.

Yes, loose-lipped Farquharson is a reliable source as he learned the truth from Isabel Druitt who had also conferred with Dr Anderson.

Once again, even Hainsworth doesn't go this far because he said in his post #156 in the "Druitt and Monro" thread of 5th November about Isabella Druitt:

"we think she tried her son's MP, to alert the authorities"

And (in respect of the woman who tried to speak to Anderson):

"We think this was Isabella Druitt based, partly, on cryptic glimpses in her surviving letters."

Somehow Hainsworth thinking that Anderson's and Farquharson's source was Isabella Druitt is turned by Hawley into confirmed fact.

Not that Hainsworth himself isn't capable of turning speculation into fact for no other reason than that, because it fits into his theory, this now makes it fact.

What evidently happened is that the Hainsworths were excited at the prospect of reading surviving Druitt correspondence in the West Sussex archives but, disappointingly, found nothing whatsoever relevant to Druitt. In their disappointment, they managed to convince themselves that comments in one letter which they could not understand were "cryptic glimpses" into the truth. The full text of the correspondence has not been shared and I rather suspect that, if it were, it would be less cryptic than it appears to the Hainsworths.

The idea that Isabella Druitt told Farquharson of suspicions about Druitt being the Ripper appears to be solely based on the fact that the name "Farquharson" appears in Isabella's address book. Note that it's just the surname, not his address, so that it is uncertain if this was actually Henry Farquharson MP as opposed to someone else of the same name. What the purpose would be of someone's name being in an address book but not their address is unclear. Hainsworth, in his book, gives no context as to the appearance of the name so that it's impossible to know whether it's likely to have been Henry Farquharson or someone else.

The problem with Hainsworth is that we know that as soon as he saw the name Farquharson in any context connected with Druitt he would have leapt to the conclusion that it was the Member of Parliament and would then state it as confirmed fact, although, in their book, the Hainsworths do just say: "We believe this to be Henry Richard Farquharson".

Not that it really matters. There can't be any doubt that Druitt's family, or at least some members of it, harboured a suspicion that Montague was Jack the Ripper, so if it was Isabella, and she told Farquharson, that gets us nowhere in understanding whether her suspicion was well founded.

The Hainsworths also say in their book:

"Having left this failed interview, we think she tried her son's MP, to alert the authorities without divulging their identity. Unfortunately Farquharson - whose name appears in Isabel's address book though she resides in London - told his ten closest pals and it leaked to the press."

There is no evidence that Farquharson ever met Isabella Druitt let alone spoke to her about Druitt or that Druitt ever spoke to Anderson. One can speculate about it until the cows come home but to say that there is any evidence in Hainsworth's book which supports it is false. The idea that Farquharson told his "ten closest pals" about Druitt, which is how it leaked to the press, is nothing more than fantasy on Hainsworth's part. He might just as easily have said his 100 closest pals or his 2 closest pals. He simply plucked a number out of thin air.

Yes, William Druitt flagrantly lied at the inquest into his brother's death.

At least this is arguable but it is equally arguable that no such lie was told. That William is supposed to have lied to the coroner is based on a single sentence in a single newspaper report of the inquest into the death of Montagu Druitt which states regarding William Druitt's evidence:

—" Witness, continuing, said deceased had never made any attempt on his life before. His mother became insane in July last. He had no other relative."

It's important to remember that William Druitt would not have said the words "He had no other relative" but would have answered a question from the coroner, saying either "yes" or "no". So the assumed question by the coroner here was: "Does he have any other relative?" to which William answered "No".

But, in itself, that cannot possibly have been the question because everyone on earth has at least two relatives in order to have been born so the question must have been intended to refer to living relatives, which is not stated in the report. To that extent we already need to adjust the assumed question, as reported, to incorporate living relatives. Druitt's answer in the negative would not have been true if that had indeed been the question, not least because he had a brother and sister living in London, but one can't help feeling that the reporter for the Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette did not hear or understand the question correctly, alternatively that William did not hear or understand it correctly. After all, the deceased Druitt, just like pretty much everyone else in the world, must have had other living relatives, such as a second cousin twice removed, and William could hardly have been saying that there was not a single surviving other relative, however distant.

What if, after William had said that their mother had become insane in July, the coroner had asked the ambiguous "Any other relative?" Perhaps he was asking if any other relative had become insane to which William, understanding him to mean that, said "No". The coroner could, one assumes, also have been asking if there were any other relatives present at the inquest. There may be other possibilities. It seems such an unlikely lie for William Druitt to have told even if he suspected his brother of being Jack the Ripper. It's possible it was a lie, I suppose, if one of the relatives was gagging to spill the beans and tell the coroner and the press of the family suspicion about Montague and William wanted to avoid that happening, but even then, in that somewhat unlikely scenario, it would have been foolhardy to lie to the coroner in such a way about something which was going to be published in a newspaper and could easily have been checked and disproved. According to Hawley, posting on his own account as Hainsworth's unofficial spokesman,

"The Hainsworths counter-counter that William must have said that he and his mother had no other relations as this was the suicide of a nephew of a very famous, deceased physician, Dr Robert Druitt, which is the angle the press would have led with had they known. "

That, however, makes no sense because Dr Robert Druitt was dead at the time of the inquest which means that there was no need for William to have lied at all if the aim was to cover up that Montague was a relative of Dr Robert. Even if the question was "Does he have any other relative?" and William had said "Yes, he has a brother and sister", how would that have pointed the press towards what Hawley describes as "a very famous, deceased physician"?

In any case, one really has to question Hainsworth's claim that Dr Robert Druitt was, or ever had been, "very famous" or that the local Chiswick press would have led with this angle when reporting on the inquest if they'd known that the deceased Montague Druitt had been his nephew. Indeed, one can't help thinking that if Dr Robert Druitt had been mentioned during the inquest, the likely reaction of the press reporters present would have been "Who's he?".

When Dr Robert Druitt died on 15 May 1883, he received a modest one paragraph obituary in the Times of 22 May 1883 (which was later republished in the St James Budget of 26 May) but there was nothing else mentioned in any other newspapers on the British Newspaper Archive. During his life, he didn't feature in any news stories other than as an attending doctor testifying at an inquest, and mentions of him can only be found in the Times when he was appointed medical officer to St George's in 1856 and subsequently a doctor of medicine in 1878. The Times obituary states that he was most widely known for his 1839 book about surgery, Surgeon's Vade Mecum, which is unlikely to have been required reading for most of the general public or even known about by non-surgeons during the 1880s. Perhaps his name was known to those in the medical profession but it seems a real push to say that he had been "very famous". Yet this seems to be Hainsworth's new schtick and, as we've seen, in his first post which started all this off, he oddly and unnaturally described Druitt (without naming him) as "nephew of the late, famous Robert Druitt".

It's a bit like how he once used to call Montague Druitt an athlete (and quite possibly still does) for no other reason than that he wanted to connect him to the fictional boxer Mortemer Slade in Logan's 1907 novel, thinking that "athlete" is the word which encompasses both a cricketer and a boxer. Suddenly, the suspect is no longer boring old Montague. He is the nephew of a famous doctor.

Nevertheless, like I say, the point Hawley is making here about William Druitt having lied at the inquest is at least arguable although a more reasonable way of phrasing it by Hawley would be to have said: "William Druitt appears to have lied at the inquest into his brother's death".

Yes, J F Nesbit is one of the most significant and revealing contemporaneous sources. For one thing, he has either read or been told of the contents of the filed version of the Mac Report. He confirms the family have tried and failed to cover up their member's guilt.

Hawley is here referring to an anonymously written article published in the Referee in December 1894 which might (or might not) have been written by J.F. Nesbit. The identity of the author doesn't really matter though. The key point is that whoever wrote it does not appear to have been referring to Druitt because it was said in the article that the Whitechapel murder had been "shut up in a lunatic asylum by his friends" and had died in the asylum. This is clearly not Druitt. The reason Hainsworth has convinced himself that the man is Druitt is because it was also stated that "the relatives of Jack the Ripper did at last know or suspect the truth about their charge, though for reasons that can be well understood, they preferred to hush up the affair". Because, for Hainsworth, Druitt's relatives were covering up the truth about Montague, it must be the case that any family covering up the truth of Jack the Ripper was the Druitt family. He can't seem to conceive of any other candidate whose family might have preferred to hush up the truth. But in this case the suspect was said to have died in a lunatic asylum. So why is it Druitt? The answer, it seems, is because Hainsworth says it is. That is not a good answer.

Yes, Frank Richardson knew a great deal about Druitt and the family secret, partly proven by another book he wrote.

Frank Richardson certainly appears to have known in 1908 that the then well-known suspect who had drowned in the Thames was called Druitt because he featured a fictional Jack the Ripper called "Dr Bluitt" in his book of that year The Worst Man in the World (and a somewhat more cryptic clue in another book suggests he might have known that Druitt was a barrister) but to say he knew "a great deal" about Druitt and the family secret is an unfounded exaggeration.

Yes, Sir Basil Thomson described Druitt as an English medical student against whom there was not enough evidence to make an arrest.

This is false. What Sir Basil Thomson actually wrote in the 3 October 1924 edition of the Radio Times was that, "...the "Jack the Ripper" outrages… are now believed by the police to have been the work of an insane Russian medical student whose body was found floating in the Thames immediately after the last of the outrages".

Hawley doesn't seem to be the slightest bit bothered that Thomson referred to the Ripper as a "Russian medical student" and, indeed, has simply changed "Russian" to "English" as if that sorts out the problem. Druitt, whose body was certainly found floating in the Thames, was neither Russian nor a medical student. It seems fairly obvious that Thomson, who had no involvement in the Ripper investigation, had merged a number of different publicly mentioned suspects in his mind and was confused.

Hainsworth himself has said: "Sir Basil Thomson’s rewrite [of Griffiths] shows that he had no insider knowledge to offer on the Dorset solution and, as with all his Scotland Yard colleagues, had not been taken into “Good Old Mac’s” confidence about Druitt".

So even Hainsworth has rubbished Thomson's remarks as being by someone who merely re-wrote what Griffiths had already published in his 1898 book but had no additional knowledge on the subject. That is quite obviously the case.

The authors make a strong circumstantial case for Druitt having been placed in a private asylum in France and then in the Tukes' asylum at Chiswick from which he escaped and killed himself.

When Hawley stops stating something as a fact which is not a fact and changes the wording to "strong circumstantial case" we know there must be a serious problem with the underlying evidence.

There is really no case to be made that Druitt had been placed in a private asylum in France. It's all based on a single newspaper report which, if even remotely accurate, means that a raving English madman said to have been in a French asylum in December 1888 (which Hainsworth unilaterally re-dates to November 1888) cannot possibly have been Druitt.

Further, there is no actual evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that Druitt was ever in Tuke's asylum.

Hainsworth's reasoning is based primarily on the fact that Druitt's mother had died in the Tuke family's asylum in Chiswick, and Chiswick was where Druitt's body was found - which, of course may not be anywhere near where he jumped (and Sims tells us that was the Embankment) -together with a claim by Sims that the Ripper had escaped from an asylum, albeit, apparently, prior to committing the murders. Macnaghten himself was very clear in his autobiography in saying that he did not believe that Jack the Ripper "had ever been detained in an asylum".

GONE ABROAD

A part of Hainsworth's theory that Druitt was in a French lunatic asylum after the Kelly murder seems to based on the fact that it is stated that in the 21 December 1888 minutes of the Blackheath Cricket Club, of which Druitt was the secretary and treasurer, that Druitt had "gone abroad" so that he was removed from his position. Hainsworth's theory is that Druitt was in the asylum in November 1888, shortly after the Kelly murder, raving and screaming, but was, incredibly, and miraculously, sufficiently recovered and released in order for him to attend a board meeting of his cricket club ten days after Kelly's murder on 19 November, represent his family at a west country appeal on 22 November and make an appearance as counsel in the Royal Courts of Justice on 27 November 1888. This means that if he was believed by the Blackheath cricket club to have been "abroad" on 21 December it couldn't possibly have been because he was in the Paris asylum from which he must have returned by that date (and he was almost certainly lying at the bottom of the river at the time in any case).

What did it mean in 1888 to have "gone abroad"?

Let's start with the contemporary (19th century) dictionary definition of "abroad".

From the 1888 New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, we find the first meaning to be:

"Broadly, widely, at large, over a broad or wide surface."

The second meaning is given as:

"At large; freely moving about"

The third meaning is given as:

"Out of one's house or abode, out of doors; out in the open air".

The fourth meaning is given as

"Out of the home country, in or into foreign lands"

The fourth meaning is probably the one we use most today. In respect of the first and second meanings, the examples given relate to things (gold, suspicions etc.) that are at large, as opposed to people, but what about the third meaning? How was that used?

Some historical examples are provided as follows:

"I am glad to see your Lordship abroad: I heard say your Lordship was sicke" (Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1, 1597).

"He found me not, as I was abroad dining with a friend" (Borrow's Zincali, 1841)

"The whole population was abroad, either reaping or threshing" (Jephson's Brittany, 1859)

Those examples do apply to people but not missing people, just people out and about.

What about the specific expression "gone abroad"?

Well, it's certainly the case that an idea, impression or rumour could have been said to have "gone abroad" meaning "in wide circulation", "at large" or "around" hence, for example, in Volume 6 of Punch of 1844 it is stated:

"Sir Valentine Blake was anxious to correct a misapprehension that had gone abroad; that is to say, if such a thing could be said to have gone abroad which was very prevalent at home (hear)"

We there see a joke being made about an idea having gone abroad which may not have left the country.

"Equally, from the Halifax Courier of 22 April 1854:

"An erroneous impression having gone abroad…."

And in the Sun of 21 April 1802 making it very clear that what they were saying had noting to do with a foreign country:

"A mistaken idea has gone abroad in England…"

But that's not on the point. We need to know if people could be said to have gone abroad when they were simply missing as opposed to having necessarily left the country.

In a Casebook post on 6th November 2025, R.J. Palmer challenged Caroline Morris to locate an example from the nineteenth century whereby "gone abroad" meant "whereabouts unknown" as opposed to the literal meaning of having left the country. He said he was "specifically attempting to find the source for the often-made claim that 'gone abroad' meant his 'whereabouts were unknown"."

One can see that it wouldn't exactly be easy to find examples of the latter because, while someone might say that X has (literally) "gone abroad" and is in, say, France, or America, if they were using the expression euphemistically to say that a person's whereabouts were unknown, they were hardly going to explain it or add that it means he is still in England. Nevertheless, I think I might be able to help him out.

A quick search of the British Newspaper Archive will discover that a frequent auction listing in the nineteenth century will include the phrase "Effects of a gentleman gone abroad". In an 1876 article entitled "The Disfigured Portrait or What Is It Like?" by "Uncle Wilding" published in Le Follet, which opens with just such a listing, we find "gone abroad" referred to as a "vague intimation". The author then says:

"Had he gone abroad for his country's good or for his own? Or had he simply "gone abroad" in this country, as so many have done before him…?"

That seems to me to be a pretty clear indication that "gone abroad" could be used (and understood) euphemistically to mean someone who might still be in the country but had disappeared.

In any case, if the minutes of the Blackheath Cricket Club did mean that Druitt had left the country, his departure would have had to have occurred at some point after 27 November on which date it is known for a fact that Druitt was in England. With Druitt's death almost certainly having been at some point between 1st and 4th December, this doesn't give him very long to have left the country and then returned to commit suicide. And to the extent that Hainsworth's theory relies on Druitt escaping from the Tuke asylum in Chiswick in order to kill himself, this gives him even less time because he would have had to have been taken raving to Paris at some point after the 27th November court hearing, then returned to England, then been committed to Tuke's asylum before escaping, all in the space of a week at most.

MORE HAWLEY NONSENSE

Doctor and Medical Student

In #23 of the 'Druitt and Monro 'thread on 1st November 2025, Hawley said:

"According to the bits and pieces the Hainsworths found, Druitt WAS a doctor, in the sense of having been a medical school drop out - "doctor", "surgeon" and "medical student" being used interchangeably at the time."

Absolutely not. Hainsworth merely speculates, with no evidential basis, that Druitt once studied medicine. No evidence has ever been presented by Hainsworth that the words "doctor" or "surgeon" were used interchangeably with "medical student" at the time. All Hainsworth has ever been able to point to is a single example where Abberline, at one point in a conversation with a reporter was quoted as referring to the suspect as a "young doctor" then, at another point, as a student, after his attention had been drawn by a reporter for the Pall Mall Gazette (of 31st March 1903) to a recent newspaper report in "a well known Sunday paper" which had said that the Ripper was "a young medical student who was found drowned in the Thames". The problem is that this single example could simply have reflected some confusion on Abberline's part as to whether the suspect was a doctor or a medical student rather than him using the term interchangeably. After all, if Abberline had always thought that the suspect who had drowned in the Thames had been a doctor, it would surely have been confusing for him to have been told by the reporter that the man had been a medical student, hence he used both terms in his response.

This is especially true bearing in mind that the reporter had given Abberline wrong information about the suspect. The well known Sunday paper being referred to must have been the Referee. But the issue of that paper of Sunday 29th March 1903, which must be the one the PMG reporter was referring to, said nothing about any young medical student having been found in the Thames. What was said (by George Sims) was that: "The genuine “Jack” was a doctor.  His body was found in the Thames on December 31 1888." If Abberline had read that newspaper, he would have known that the claim was that it was a doctor who had been found in the Thames. Nothing would have been more natural for him to have then mentioned "doctor" to the PMG reporter, adding "young" because the reporter had used that word to describe the suspect, even though the Sunday paper in question had said no such thing At the same time, being confused about the mention of a medical student, Abberline might have repeated the word the reporter used later in the conversation.

It is amusing that Hawley posted on 6th November 2025:

"The term "doctor" was interchangeable with "medical student". For this kind of loose definition look no further than Abberline's interview of 1903 in which he refers to Druitt as both a "doctor" and a "young student". There are other examples where Druitt is referred to as a medical student, which he could well have been though never graduating."

Look no further than Abberline's 1903 interview! Yes, indeed, we can't look any further because there are no other known examples than Abberline's 1903 interview!! If you're going to claim that "doctor" was interchangeable with "medical student" you surely need to provide a number of examples of this rather than a single isolated example which might (and probably does) just evidence confusion of terms.

In any event, there's no reason to think things were different in 1903 than today when a medical student could easily be referred to as an aspiring young doctor or even as a young doctor because, while training, they may perform some functions of a doctor. Anyone in a hospital with a white coat examining patients would be thought of as a doctor, even if they were only a medical student. But that doesn't mean the reverse is true and that an actual, qualified doctor would ever be called a medical student. Nor would it apply to someone who had stopped being a medical student in their life and had become, say, a barrister or schoolteacher, because they would then never be a doctor, especially if deceased, and, to the extent they had once studied medicine, would be called a former medical student.

Macnaghten's knowledge

Another claim by Hawley the next day was (Hawley #62, 2nd November 2025):

"In 1913, Macnaghten - whose name had never before been associated with the Whitechapel crimes - startled the reporter from "The Daily Mail" who was doing a final interview with the retiring Assistant Commissioner. Macnaghten claimed that he knew the identity of the murderer who had, he reassured him, had killed himself long ago. That this was a "secret" which had come to him personally; that he knew the identity of the maniac in question very well ("that remarkable man"); and that he had destroyed any and all incriminating documentation (implying it was his property, not the Yard's)."

This twists the facts. Macnaghten did not say that "he knew the identity of the murderer". Not at all. What he said was: "I have a very clear idea of who he was". The difference between the two is critical. In Hawley's account, Macnaghten had actual knowledge. But in the true account, it's an idea, albeit a very clear one. It doesn’t matter how clear an idea is, though; it's not knowledge, it's suspicion. It can only have been a theory. It's not exactly astounding news that Macnaghten thought that Druitt was, or at least could have been, the Whitechapel murderer. The problem is that we don't know why. For all Hainsworth's belief that there were multiple attempts to sell the Druitt story to the public in fictional or semi-fictional form, none of them explain why suspicion attached to Druitt in the first place, making them utterly useless to us. We are as in the dark about why Druitt was believed by his family to be Jack the Ripper now as we have ever been.

The search for Druitt

On 7 November 2025, now using Michael Banks as his postman, Hainsworth posed a riddle:

"If Melville Macnaghten in 1894 only had access to, say, P.C. Moulson's report on the recovery of Druitt's body, how did he know about William Druitt's search for his missing sibling?"

Here's the thing. Macnaghten never said a single word about William Druitt's search for his missing sibling.

Hainsworth once again seems to be confusing Macnaghten with Sims and assuming that everything that Sims knew about the case came from Macnaghten because the two men were friends.

Before discussing that, though, did Sims reveal that he knew about William Druitt's search for his missing sibling? Well, no, he did not! What he wrote in 1907 was that:

"After the maniacal murder in Miller's court, the doctor disappeared from the place in which he had been living, and his disappearance caused inquiries to be made concerning him by his friends who had, there is reason to believe, their own suspicions about him, and these inquiries about him were made through the proper authorities."

R.J. Palmer has made the point that "friends" could mean "relatives" but, even if that’s true, and even if Sims had written that Druitt's relatives had made inquiries about his disappearance, how does that reveal a specific knowledge on his part of William's search for his brother?

But let's assume that Sims did know about William's search for his missing brother and that this is what he meant when he spoke of inquiries made by Druitt's friends. Did that information have to have come from Macnaghten?

The assumption that everything Sims knew about the case came from Macnaghten because the two men were friends is an assumption which may not be true. On the contrary, Sims might have thought it improper to bring up police matters when speaking to his friend who, until 1903, was a subordinate to the Assistant Commissioner and would presumably not have had authority to speak to the press about police cases. Things might have changed once he became the Assistant Commissioner in 1903, because Anderson seems to have felt himself free to speak to journalists, but, even then, we just don't know if Macnaghten did reveal any confidential information about the Ripper to his friend. Sims was a journalist who might have made his own independent inquiries. Knowing that the man suspected of being Jack the Ripper in Arthur Griffiths' 1898 book was called Montague Druitt (which might have come from Macnaghten but equally could have come from another source), it seems only natural that he would have tried to find out more about the man. He doesn't necessarily have to have been spoon-fed every single piece of information by Macnaghten.

But whether it was or was not information derived from Macnaghten, it's just so weird that Hainsworth assumes that Mac was the source of all Sims' information. Hence, when Sims includes some information in his articles, Hainsworth confusingly asks how Macnaghten knew it. That is pretty bizarre but is, I think, a reflection of Hainsworth's complete loss of objectivity, as he feels he knows exactly what Macnaghten was thinking and doing at all times, which is impossible.

And then even if Macnaghten had known about William's search for his brother, so what? Let's look again at Hainsworth's original question or "riddle":

"If Melville Macnaghten in 1894 only had access to, say, P.C. Moulson's report on the recovery of Druitt's body, how did he know about William Druitt's search for his missing sibling?"

Well Macnaghten said his suspicion about Druitt was based on the fact that Druitt's family believed him to have been the murderer. So he must have had some information from the Druitt family, whether directly or indirectly, which could have included that William had searched for him after his death. So it doesn't seem to get us anywhere if Macnaghten did know about William Druitt's search. That information might just have come from the same source as his information about Druitt being a sexual maniac whose family suspected him of being Jack the Ripper.

MAC THE COWARD

Manipulated once again by Hainsworth, Hawley told us in a post on 2nd November 2025:

"Once in mid-1889 he had the job again Macnaghten suffered the rude shock that his immediate superior, Dr Robert Anderson, was immune to his charm and hostile towards his boyish enthusiasm to be a sleuth in the field (although not naming Mac, in his 1910 memoir, Anderson disparages his underling as a coward! Mac returned the disfavour by writing positively about everybody at the Yard, except Warren of course, but simply pretending Anderson never existed by not mentioning him once)."

It is absolutely false that Anderson disparaged Macnaghten as a coward and, not surprisingly, as always, no quotes are provided to demonstrate this.

The actual opposite is true. Anderson told a story which praised Macnaghten for warning about a dangerous individual who ended up attempting to assassinate the prime minister.

Anderson confessed to making a mistake by ignoring the dangerous individual whereas Macnaghten – the hero of the story - had taken the threat seriously. There is not even a hint of cowardice in the tale.

Further, there is no evidence at all to suggest that Anderson was immune to Macnaghten's charm and "hostile towards his boyish enthusiasm to be a sleuth in the field". There isn't even any evidence of any "boyish enthusiasm" in the first place.

Did Macnaghten write "positively about everybody at the Yard" other than Anderson? Of course not. There is not a single mention in Macnaghten's book of the Commissioner of Police between 1890 and 1903, Sir Edward Bradford. Does this mean that Macnaghten despised him? The question is too silly to require an answer. In addition, aside from praising his direct predecessor as Assistant Commissioner OF C.I.D., Edward Henry, for introducing a good new fingerprint system at Scotland Yard (but not saying anything about his personal relationship with the man), and with the exception of a brief neutral mention of the fact that during the Sydney Street siege of 1911 the Assistant Commissioner in charge of administration at Scotland Yard (Sir Alexander Carmichael Bruce) was at the scene, there is a no mention by Macnaghten of any of the other Assistant Commissioners at Scotland Yard during the entire time he was there, namely: Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pearson, Sir Charles Howard, Major Sir Frederick Wodehouse and Frederick Bullock. Did he hate this bunch of colleagues? Again, that's a silly question. Sure, Macnaghten praised a lot of his underlings in his book but that is to be expected. He'd been friends with Monro since before he joined Scotland Yard so he was obviously going to praise him. He also says he was friends with Colonel Majendie.

But in respect of the relationship between Anderson and Macnaghten we have literally nothing to base any conclusion about that on. As I've mentioned, Anderson praises Macnaghten in his own book for realizing before he did that the man who attempted to assassinate the prime minister was a genuine threat; and that's all we have to go on. Nothing more. For all we know the two men had a good working relationship without ever being friends so that there was nothing to say in the book. We just don't know. To pretend that we do is wrong.

IT'S REALLY TUMBLETY

Then we are told by Hawley that Sims thought that Tumblety was just as good a suspect as Druitt. So he tells us:

"Due to such office stresses, all Macnaghten could do was try and figure out how, down the road, the Yard could take credit for at least identifying Tumblety as Jack - or so he believed - and yet ensure the embarrassing elements of his fleeing anroad remained safely dormant and forgotten

Druitt was a minor suspect about whom gossip flared up in 1891 due to Farquharson. Druitt had suffered from a mental delusion - though persuasive enough to upset his family until Mac reassured them there was nothing in it - and so provided Macnaghten with a much better finale. As in, the supposedly super-efficient police virtually pushed the cornered miscreant into the river.

By the 1900's the profile propagated by George Sims is much more like Tumblety than Druitt; an ex-medico, heavy facial hair, rotund of frame and mature of years, so independently wealthy so he need not work, reclusive and secretive in his habits, a single man who hangs out mostly with other men.

The Druitt bits are being an asylum vet (well, maybe?) and the location and manner of his suicide (definitely). In 1907, Sims will even claim that the police have two competing, best solutions: either the English doctor who drowned himself - or an American weirdo who is still alive."

Oh why couldn't we have witnessed a debate between Hainsworth and Hawley about Hawley's claim that the profile propagated by George Sims in the 1900s was "much more like Tumblety than Druitt"? That's a debate I'd pay to see.

I've looked at all of Sims' writings about the Whitechapel murders and I can't see a single thing he said during the 1900s which can be linked to Tumblety. The description that Hawley attributes to Sims' suspect namely, "an ex-medico, heavy facial hair, rotund of frame and mature of years, so independently wealthy so he need not work, reclusive and secretive in his habits, a single man who hangs out mostly with other men" doesn't relate in any way to anything that Sims ever wrote about Jack the Ripper. And Hawley provides not a single quote to prove that Sims said anything like this.

But perhaps Hawley will treat us to more of this intriguing theory in one of his inevitable dull articles about Tumblety which takes up space in every single issue of Ripperologist and will no doubt continue to do so until the very end of time.

THE END

Hainsworth's reign of terror on the Forum came to a temporary end after he couldn't restrain himself and used the privilege of posting via Hawley to refer to his opponent as a "troll". This insult was somewhat mild considering he once outrageously described Abby Normal as a "vile wanker" on the board when he was a member (while I escaped with "like a crackpot fetishist" and "uber-tiresome literalist"). But it was incredibly ironic because, after all, what else was Hainsworth doing in his October 2025 posts but trolling the entire forum with what can only be described as a blatant lie about Druitt having been arrested in 1887?

Hainsworth himself, of course, will not think of it in his way. For him, the arrest of Druitt is a revelation of a sacred truth which only he, with his higher level of understanding about everything, is able to see. He doesn't need evidence. He doesn’t need documents. He has faith to guide him. And his faith tells him not only that Minnie Cameron was attacked by a barrister in 1887 but also that this barrister was Montague Druitt and, further, that Montague Druitt was arrested before Minnie was pressured by the powerful Druitt family to drop her allegation against him.

Anyway, the outcome of it all is that Hainsworth is single-handedly responsible for the introduction of a new rule on Casebook which prevents non-members from posting through proxies. But please don't fear. This rule doesn’t apply to friends of Jon Menges. If you fall into this category, like Keith Skinner used to, you'll be able to continue posting as normal through a third party member (i.e. Menges) because there is an exception for mates of Menges, even though, in Skinner's case, there was never any reason why he couldn't post under his own name and, miracle of miracles, he has since done so. Hainsworth also reactivated his account (although it soon became marked as "Inactive"). So why did he ever need Hawley to post on his behalf, one wonders?

THE ANDERSON MYSTERY

While the internal workings of the Criminal Investigation Department are unclear, I am of the view that it is inconceivable that a chief constable would have been allowed to send a memorandum to the Secretary of State without it having gone through the Assistant Commissioner. For that reason, although the memorandum was never sent, I remain convinced that Macnaghten's draft memorandum was reviewed and amended by Anderson before being placed on the Scotland Yard file. It is true that Anderson's name doesn't appear on the report but this may reflect the fact that it was never finalized to be sent to the Home Office as intended. As I've previously argued, the fact that Anderson was responsible for the amendments would explain why Kosminski's candidacy as a suspect is enhanced in the final version while Druitt's is downgraded.

But that does assume Anderson genuinely believed that a Polish Jew was Jack the Ripper.

It is somewhat of a mystery to me that Hainsworth doesn't claim that Anderson also believed that Druitt was the murderer. After all, why not? If the Crawford letter related to Druitt, as Hainsworth believes, it would seem likely that it was to Anderson that Druitt's female relative confided her belief that Montague was the culprit. At the very least, Anderson must have known what the private information was which pointed to Druitt. If Anderson genuinely still believed that Kosminski was the most likely suspect, it doesn't say much for the private information, which is, no doubt, why Hainsworth creates a story whereby Anderson fobs off Druitt's relative, possibly without even listening to what she had to say (and in his book Hainsworth suggests, ludicrously, that Anderson never even knew her name.) Because if Anderson knew all about the private information yet didn't think Druitt was the Ripper, that private information could not have been very convincing or compelling. It also explains why Hainsworth has also created a story in his mind that Anderson and Macnaghten didn't like each other, even though there's no evidence at all to lead one to this conclusion.

What if, in fact, they both shared the same desire to protect the Druitt family? What if Anderson's desire was even stronger than Macnaghten's to the extent that he would, in 1910, lead the public and press in completely the wrong direction, knowing full well that a Polish Jew (i.e. Kosminski) was not the Whitechapel murderer. I mean, sure, there was some form of identification of Kosminski, as confirmed by Swanson, but that doesn't mean a great deal.

I'm not saying that Anderson did favour Druitt only that it is possible he did. If Macnaghten was so concerned to protect the Druitt family name in the way Hainsworth imagines it, Anderson, one assumes, could have shared the same concern.

THE NUB OF THE ARGUMENT

The central element of Hainsworth's thesis seems to be as expressed in his Casebook post of 20th December 2025 in the 'Druitt and Monro" thread (#479) in which he said:

"for certain Late Victorians, all members of the Anglican-Gentile establishment, Montague Druitt was not a "suspect"; he was their solution - rightly or wrongly. They believed that their fellow, deceased gent had definitely been "Jack the Ripper"."

The problem is that he doesn't identify those "certain Late Victorians". The only two I can think of, other than Macnaghten, to whom it could properly be said to apply are Sims and Farquharson, who did both seem confident that Druitt was the Ripper but, for Sims, it's unclear if he was basing this on a belief that Scotland Yard held the same opinion while Farquharson seems to have been relying on the family's belief. As for Scotland Yard, which really only boils down to Macnaghten, we know for a fact that he wasn't certain that Druitt was the solution. In his privately held memorandum he wrote: "I have always held strong opinions regarding [Druitt], and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become." But, he added, "The truth, however, will never be known". The very fact that he had to think the matter over demonstrates that the concept of "definitely" was not in his mind. Similarly, in his book, he said he inclined to the belief that the murderer committed suicide shortly after the murder of Kelly but that is a long way from a definite belief.

So who are all these late Victorians Hainsworth is talking about? I fear Hainsworth is including individuals who may not even have been talking about Druitt at all or knew nothing about him. If Macnaghten didn't know for sure, how could anyone else have done?

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Amusing though it was to watch the Dangerous Brothers in action on the Casebook Forum, at the end of the day it doesn't matter what Hawley and Hainsworth think. The facts don't change. We remain as ignorant of what the private information which implicated Druitt was as we did when the existence of Macnaghten's memorandum was first revealed.

While I remain of the view that Robert Anderson was responsible for the changes made to the final version of the Macnaghten memorandum, I feel that the focus by Hainsworth on Macnaghten is a distraction. It doesn't much matter what Macnaghten thought of the private information. Clearly there was something in it albeit not conclusive proof. But what was it that caused Druitt's family to be suspicious of him? We just don't know.

Was it a confession? Could the north country vicar (speculated by Hainsworth to have been Rev. Arthur Du Boulay-Hill, the brother-in-law of Rev Charles Druitt, who was, in 1899, the Rector of East Bridgford in Nottinghamshire) have been telling a story to the press which had been told to him in confidence by a west country vicar to whom Druitt had confessed after the Kelly murder? For me, the big problem is that the key detail about the suspect doesn't match. While Macnaghten might easily have been confused about Druitt's profession, how could the vicar have thought that a barrister was a surgeon, especially if the west country vicar who told him about the confession was Rev. Charles Druitt?

It is true that the Vicar's Ripper died "shortly after committing the last murder". While this could be said to be consistent with the Druitt story, the absence of any mention of suicide (or a death in the Thames) is troubling. Further, what was "the last murder"? Did it mean Kelly or one of the later victims?

The only other detail provided by the north country vicar about the suspect was that he was engaged in rescue work "among the depraved women of the East End". While there is at least some kind of possibility that Druitt might have done charitable work at Oxford House in Bethnal Green, that charitable work would have involved assisting at one or more of: "men's and boy's clubs, Sunday schools and district visiting, entertainments, lectures and classes, cricket and football clubs, serving on committees, charity organization, housing of the poor, society for relief of distress". Nothing in that list suggests that the volunteers would be engaged in rescue work among "depraved women" nor has Hainsworth ever provided any evidence that the volunteers of Oxford House had anything at all to do with women, let alone sex workers, as opposed to working men and boys. So, even if Hainsworth is correct to speculate that Druitt might have volunteered to work at Oxford House, it still doesn't quite match.

When it comes to Druitt as the Ripper, there remains the very troubling issue of him having played in a competitive cricket match in Blandford, Dorset, on Thursday, 30 August 1888 and then a further match in Wimborne, Dorset, on Saturday, 1 September 1888, with Mary Ann Nichols having been murdered in Whitechapel in the early hours of Friday, 31 August 1888 (effectively the night of Thursday 30 August).

That said, we do need to consider the possibility that it might be the very fact that Druitt made a suspicious return journey from Dorset to London on Thursday afternoon, returning rapidly on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning which led to suspicions about him in the first place. Not necessarily at the time - because no one was likely to have suspected him of murdering an East London prostitute when it happened - but perhaps looking back and calculating the dates, it led to a particular suspicion if other factors were involved.

This is the problem with the state of our lack of knowledge. Anything can be possible.

Those are just my thoughts anyway. I don't have any kind of problem with Druitt as a Ripper suspect. It's entirely plausible. But it doesn't matter, in my opinion, how many people in the 1890s or 1900s thought that he was the Ripper or had heard that he was the Ripper because those beliefs might have been founded on an erroneous conclusion of a Druitt family member or members. That's why I find Hainsworth's approach somewhat tedious which is made worse by him misinterpreting or misrepresenting the evidence in the case.

As for Hainsworth himself, he doesn't give me the impression of someone who feels shame but he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for stating on the Casebook Forum as a fact that Druitt was arrested in 1887 in circumstances where no source was provided (and where, in fact, there is not the slightest evidence of any arrest).

I've made the point in the past, in the context of Hawley, about the importance of trusting an author and how that trust can be lost if they make false claims. In this case, the reader of Hainsworth's book is supposed to rely entirely on the author (or authors) for the truthfulness and accuracy of a claim that an unpublished letter in the Druitt archives contains a cryptic reference to Montague. In circumstances where Hainsworth is prepared to post false information on the Forum, how can we trust that he's interpreted the Druitt letter, with its mention of an encumbrance, correctly?

That's just one problem. There is, unfortunately, no chance of Hainsworth moderating his behaviour or his arguments because he has convinced himself that he is right about everything. In the absence of proper evidence, however, I don't think he's going to convince many others.

LORD ORSAM

19 February 2026