Melville Macnaghten
Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten
When he prematurely retired in 1913 due to illness, Macnaghten claimed to journalists that he knew the exact identity of
Since 1959, Macnaghten has been known for a major report written in the 1890s on the Ripper case, naming three possible
More recently, French writer Sophie Herfort has argued that Macnaghten himself was responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders.[5]
Early life and marriage
The youngest of fifteen children of
On 3 October 1878 he married Dora Emily Sanderson, the daughter of a
Career in the Criminal Investigation Department
Upon his return to England, Macnaghten was offered the post of first
However, due to the continuous disagreements with Home Secretary Matthews, Commissioner Warren chose to resign on 9 November 1888. Monro was brought in to succeed him as Commissioner. With this turn of events, Macnaghten was brought in with the position of
Macnaghten and Jack the Ripper
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Even though he missed being on the police force during the Ripper killings of 1888, Macnaghten was actively involved in the investigation of the murders of Whitechapel prostitutes between 1889 and 1891. Crimes that were initially believed by some at Scotland Yard, and certainly by the tabloid press, to be by the same perpetrator. In his memoir, Macnaghten claimed that information received "some years after" the final murder of 1888 led him to the belief that Jack the Ripper was a man who had taken his own life at the end of that year. The source of these "certain facts" that led to this "conclusion" is unidentified, though he implies in his book that it was the murderer's "own people", e.g. his relations who supposedly lived with him) who must have privately briefed the Chief Constable. Macnaghten even titles his chapter on the Whitechapel murders: "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper"; meaning that the deceased "fiend" had only haunted Londoners as they were in ignorance that the killer had been in his grave for several years.
In February 1891 a Conservative MP,
It has been widely believed for over half a century that Macnaghten, in writing from memory, committed many factual errors in his report regarding Druitt. For example, in the privately held version he inaccurately describes Druitt as a 41-year-old doctor who vanished immediately after the final murder on 9 November 1888. In fact, Druitt was functioning normally, at least outwardly, at his places of work and play until the end of November 1888.[9] This document also says that his family only "suspected" he was the Ripper. Since 1959 it has also been treated as a foundation stone of so-called "Ripperology" that the timing of Druitt's suicide, so soon after the final murder, was the threadbare reason Macnaghten considered him a suspect at all. Yet this ignores that the police chief in his memoir, and from the relative safety of retirement, revealed that Scotland Yard believed Whitechapel prostitute murders after 1888 were also by the Ripper. Years later Druitt came to his attention due to information received that was judged, by Macnaghten, to be so credible that post-1888 murders could not exonerate the tragic barrister.[10]
This line of argument is buttressed by the filed version of Macnaghten's report as he notably equivocates, writing that M. J. Druitt was only "said to be a doctor", whilst affirming that the suspect was definitely "sexually insane" and his family "believed" he was the killer. Notably,
Curiously, Douglas G. Browne in his The Rise of Scotland Yard, states that Macnaghten "appears to identify the Ripper with the leader of a plot to assassinate Mr Balfour at the Irish Office."[13] This reference is puzzling because, although there were Fenian plots to assassinate Balfour, Druitt is not known to have had any such connections and it is extremely unlikely that he did. It has been recently speculated that Browne may have taken too literally some lines by Macnaghten at the end of his Ripper chapter. Macnaghten exaggerates the negative impact on the authorities of being unable to catch the fiend. He alleges it caused the resignation of the Police Commissioner and "... very nearly settled the hash of one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State." Macnaghten means the near-resignation of the Home Secretary, but Browne has perhaps misinterpreted these ambiguous words as an allusion to the assassination plot against Balfour.[14]
The second of Macnaghten's three suspects was identified only as "Kosminski," presumably
The third suspect in Macnaghten's report was a man named Michael Ostrog, a Russian-born thief and con man who affected several aliases and disguises and was detained in asylums on several occasions. Again there is little to support this suspicion against Ostrog: records indicated that he was imprisoned in France during the murders. The fact that Ostrog was arrested and imprisoned before the report was written raises the question of why Ostrog was included at all as a viable suspect. A possible yet tenuous answer has been postulated involving Eton College. Ostrog had stolen from Macnaghten's beloved alma mater and the police chief may have included the Russian in his reports as a private act of revenge. From late 1894 Macnaghten had to know that Ostrog had been cleared of the Whitechapel crimes, yet he still persisted with his inclusion and, what is more, projection into the public sphere of Ostrog as a Ripper suspect (via literary cronies).[15]
Later career, including as Assistant Commissioner
In 1900 Macnaghten served in the Belper Committee to inquire about "the working of the method of Identification of Criminals by Measurement and Fingerprints". As the committee recommended the use of fingerprints as a means of identification over bertillonage, largely due to the testimony of Edward Henry on their respective merits.
When Henry was appointed Commissioner in 1903, succeeding
Macnaghten was
Retirement and later life
However, in 1911 Macnaghten was experiencing the first signs of ill-health; even a trip to Australia the following year failed to improve matters. He was forced to retire from his job in 1913. Macnaghten's successor at Scotland Yard was Basil Thomson who had attended New College, Oxford at the same time as Montague John Druitt, Macnaghten's preferred Ripper suspect.
In 1914 he published his memoirs Days of My Years. He also made a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica into English verse, an effort to which he devoted the last ten years of his life.
Macnaghten died on 12 May 1921 at Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster.
Macnaghten in fiction
During his lifetime Sir Melville Macnaghten was fictionalised in several novels. He appears as a character named Mr Johnson in George R. Sims' 'Dorcas Dene Detective' (1897) short stories.. The book deals with the aftermath of the Ripper case and with Macnaghten's report. Trow misspells Macnaghten's name as "McNaghten" in his book and presents a fictional version of Macnaghten's daughter.
Macnaghten also features prominently in the later chapters of Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel From Hell.
Footnotes
- ^ "Secret of Scotland Yard. The end of "Jack the Ripper". Interesting disclosure". The Daily Mail. 2 June 1913 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ Spallek, A (February 2008). "The West of England MP-Identified". Ripperologist Number 88.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.
- ISBN 0718110501.
- ^ Jack L'Éventreur démasqué, éditions Tallandier, 2007, réédition Points Seuil, 2008.
- S2CID 257233529.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.
- ^ Cullen, Tom (1965). Autumn of Terror-Jack the Ripper:His crimes and times. London: The Bodley Head Ltd. p. 219.
- ISBN 1861058705.
- ISBN 1479140252.
- ISBN 978-1-84454-797-5.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.
- ^ Douglas G. Browne, The Rise of Scotland Yard, London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1956, p. 208.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.
- ^ "Birthday Honours", The Times, 28 June 1907
- ^ "The Official Lists", The Times, 1 January 1912
- ^ "No. 28677". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1912. p. 4.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-9676-1.