Background: Family, Part One

In my next couple of posts I plan to cover what is known of Montague's immediate family, i.e. his parents and siblings. This post will cover the lives of Montague's parents; William and Ann.

William Druitt, Montague's father was born in Wimborne Minster on 23 August 1820, the forth son of Robert Druitt (1785-1822), a surgeon, and his wife Jane, nee Mayo (c.1792-1874). His three elder brothers were Robert (1814-1883), an eminent London physician and author of The Surgeon's Vade Mecum (1839); James (1816-1904), who began the Druitt firm of solicitors at Christchurch, and who was to become an well-known and respected figure in that town as well as the father of fifteen children; and, Thomas (1817-1891), a clergyman who emigrated to New South Wales Australia and eventually became Archdeacon of Monaro. There was also one sister, Jane (1822-1880). The Druitt family had lived and practiced as surgeons in Wimborne since 1712, when Philip Druitt set up a practice there.

James Druitt's unpublished memoir, written in 1888, abandoned after Montague's death and resumed in 1894, provides some detail of William's childhood. James talked of his schooldays at Wimborne Grammar School, the 'small society' the family socialised in the mid 1830's whose members 'used to entertain each other frequently at dinner and tea parties,' summer time in Wimborne, where James and his friends, which may have included William enjoyed a 'variety of pleasant walks' around Wimborne and bathing in the River Stour. James also described holidays spent with relatives at Moordown or Winchester, as well as visits to Christchurch, Romsey, Southampton and London. On one occasion in 1832, James recalled travelling home from London in 'the old Salisbury night coach - six inside, and a dismal journey it was.' The other five passengers could likely be James's mother and four siblings. Another glimpse comes from a description the family house, sold in 1823 after Robert Sr.'s death. The Times describes the residence as 'a handsome brick dwelling-house', 'modern built' and as 'in good repair, and fit for the reception of a genteel family.' The house consisted of a dining room, a drawing room, breakfast room, kitchen, with a pantry and china closet, four bedrooms and a dressing room, and of course, an underground cellar with wine bins.

William followed his father and brother's career path and qualified as a surgeon, gaining his diploma on 30 July 1841, and being admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons on 7 December 1849 (Times, Dec 10, 1849). Like many generations before him he set up practice at Wimborne Minster by 1851, where he can be found in the 1851 census residing at West Street with his mother and sister. On 3 June 1854, aged thirty-three, William was married at St. James's, Piccadilly, London, to Ann Harvey, the elder daughter of John Harvey, a wealthy farmer from Hemsworth, near Witchampton, a small village near Wimborne, ten years his junior. Over the next seventeen years William and Ann had seven children; Georgiana, William, Montague, Edward, Arthur, Edith, and Ethel. William and Ann first set up home at West Street, and in some time between 1865 and 1871 moved to Westfield House, which stands between Westfield Close and Redcotts Lane, which was according to Farson built for William's retirement, later described by a relative as a 'shocker', set in a six acre estate, including stables and two additional cottages for the servants. Professionally, William was extremely successful; as well as being a pillar of the local community he served as surgeon to the Wimborne Union Workhouse, a trustee or treasurer of many local charities at the Board of Guardians, Chairman of the Governing Body of the Minster, as well as a Justice of the Peace. Additionally, the Wimborne Guardian would later describe him as 'a strong churchman and a conservative.'

William died suddenly on 27 September 1885, collapsing and suffering a heart attack at midday, although he had a history of heart problems, his death was completely unexpected, he had apparently been looking forward to the harvest festival happening that evening. Although his funeral four days later was supposed to be private, many of the town's principal inhabitants and tradespeople joined the family in their grief. The muffled peals of the Minster bells rang all over Wimborne. The estate he left was valued at £16,579 (well over half a million pounds today). The bulk of William's fortune went to providing for his wife and daughters, each of whom received £6,000, provided they did not marry before the age of 21 (a suprisingly sensible view, all considering in the Victorian Era). The eldest son, William, received a farm and responsibility to care for their mothers. However, the three younger sons, Montague, Edward and Arthur only received £500 each, although Montague additionally inherited all his father's pictures, books, clocks, jewellery and ornaments, which Leighton summarises may have well have been valuable. Some have suggested that Montague and his younger brothers were dealt with unfairly in their father's will, especially considering Montague had borrowed against his £500 legacy in 1882 whilst qualifying for the bar. However, Druittist Matthew Fletcher argues that the will simply reflects the fact that daughters were expected to receive a good dowry at marriage and it was perfectly normal for the eldest son to inherit the family property. I agree with this view, and would also add that as William had paid for his son's education at exclusive public schools (Clifton, Winchester, Cheltenham, and Marlborough, respectively), as well as university in three cases he may have well as felt he'd provided quite adequately for them.

William's wife and Montague's mother, Ann Harvey, was most likely born in early 1830, and christened at Witchampton on 1 February, the eldest child of John Harvey (c.1789-1867), a farmer who owned the prosperous 1600 acre Hemsworth Farm and his wife, Sarah Burt (christened at Witchampton on 7 July 1793, the daughter of Stephen Burt, the owner of Witchampton Paper Mill and his wife Elizabeth Kent). John and Sarah had married at Witchampton on 5 February 1829, just under a year before Ann's birth, at around 40 and 36 at the time of their marriage, they were relatively old newlyweds. Ann's birth was soon followed by that of her younger sister Elizabeth (christened 3 April 1831. She married in 1862, John Thomas Homer, who had by 1861 succeeded his future father-in-law at Hemsworth). On 3 June 1854, aged 24 Ann married William Druitt, which was almost certainly considered a good match for both of them. William had the professional status Ann's family lacked, according to Wilding Ann 'brought her own wealth into the partnership,' which almost certainly must have made up some of the £16,579 fortune William had amassed by his death in 1885. During their thirty-one year marriage Ann apparently led a normal existence for the wife of a professional, evidently frequently writing to her husband's relatives (see the letter collection of William's brother Robert) and joining in local church campaigns and committees.

All this was, sadly, to change after her husband's death in 1885. In July 1888 Ann was admitted to Brooke Asylum, at Clapham, suffering from 'depression and paranoid delusions' and having previously tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum. Depression and mental illness evidently ran in Ann's family. Her mother also committed suicide, most likely sometime between 1851 and 1861 'whilst of unsound mind', her sister Elizabeth also suffered from mental illness and attempted suicide (in the 1901 census Elizabeth can be found at Bournemouth with a nurse. Her condition is described as 'senile'. She died a year later). Later, her son Montague killed himself in December 1888, fearing he was 'going to be like mother', and in 1933, her eldest daughter Georgiana killed herself by jumping out of an attic window. In Ann's case this genetic tendency towards depression and mental illness may have been prompted by the death of her husband, and, perhaps the scandal created by her son Edward when he converted to Catholicism (and was almost certainly disowned by the family) in 1887. A glimpse into Ann's condition during this period is given by a letter discovered by researcher David Andersen, written by Dr. Joseph Gasquet (of the establishment at Brighton where Ann was transferred to during the summer of 1888) to either Thomas Seymour or Charles Molesworth Tuke, of Manor House, Chiswick, dated 6 June 1890, after Ann had been transferred there. When Gasquest first met Mrs. Druitt she had been diagnosed with Diabetes, a diagnosis which Gasquest appears to be sceptical of. However she had clearly 'had an attack of melancholia with stupor, from which she was slowing emerging.' By the beginning of 1889, her condition had improved, now 'being one mainly of apathy with an unreasonable refusal to spend money.' But soon her condition worsened again, perhaps aggravated by the sudden death of Montague, so much so that 'she was placed under certificates [again] in April.' Gasquest also elaborates on Ann's delusions which included 'refusal of food' justified by her 'alleging that she had no oesphageal passage' and 'hallucinations that she was being electrified.' By 1890, her condition had deteriorated considerably, especially after Montague's death. She died at Manor House on 15 December 1890, her last years, having been described by Leighton as 'uncompromisingly awful'. She was buried beside her husband and son and Wimborne Minster.

The lives of William and Ann Druitt shed little light on why his relatives were apparently so adamant that Montague was the Whitechapel murderer; there is no evidence of Montague's feelings towards his conservative, authoritarian father, and although he evidently feared he was 'going to be like mother', Ann's mental problems seemed to go towards melancholic rather than violent. Perhaps they merely illustrate the secrets such an outwardly respectable family was capable of hiding under its conventional, social mask long before 1888.

The Afterlife of Montague Druitt

At 1pm on 31 December 1888, Henry Winslade, a waterman, discovered yet another decomposing body in the Thames off Thorneycroft's Wharf at Chiswick. Despite the fact the body, that of a well-dressed professional man, had several valuable items on it, including cheques for £50 and £16, £2.17s.2d in cash, and a silver watch Winslade brought it ashore intact and alerted the authorities. According to Constable George Moulson, the policeman involved the authorities were able to identify the body from 'various papers' found on the body (most likely the cheques or the season ticket from Blackheath to London) as that of Montague John Druitt, a thirty-one year old barrister and schoolmaster.

On 2 January an inquest was held at the Lamb Tap in Chiswick at which Montague's elder brother, William Harvey Druitt, a solicitor from Bournemouth, gave evidence that on 30 November Montague had got into 'serious trouble' at the school at Blackheath where he worked as an assistant master and had been dismissed. On 11 December William had heard from a friend that Montague had not been seen at his chambers in London for 'more than a week'. William immediately went to Blackheath where he had Montague's rooms searched and found a note addressed to him or George Valentine, the headmaster (the newspaper accounts are unclear on this) which stated that 'Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die' (Acton, Chiswick, and Turnham Green Gazette) and that 'what he intended to do would be the best for all parties' (Richmond and Twickenham Times). William then explained that their mother had been declared insane that July (mental illness also ran in the family, their grandmother had committed suicide, and their sister would also do many years later). The coroner, Dr. Thomas Bramah Diplock concluded that Montague had committed suicide 'whilst of unsound mind'. The next day, Montague was buried quietly at Wimborne Minster, his hometown, with a few friends and family present, a tragic end to what had been a short but promising life. However, the afterlife of Montague Druitt had only just begun.

On 11 February 1891, the Bristol Times and Mirror an a story under the heading 'Our London Letter' which stated that 'Jack the Ripper', the infamous murderer who had killed five prostitutes the notorious Whitechapel district of London during the Autumn of 1888, had been identified by a 'West of England member' who claimed that 'Jack the Ripper committed suicide on the night of the last murder.' He stated that the man was wearing 'blood-stained clothes' and this man was 'the son of a surgeon who suffered from homicidal mania.' Apparently the story was 'so circumstantial that a good many people believe it.' However, the reporter was clearly unimpressed with the West Country M.P.'s claims stating his belief that 'the accusation will [soon] be stifled thoroughly'. Although the journalist was unimpressed it would turn out that Melville Macnaghten (1853-1921), the Chief Constable of the CID, was. Macnaghten later stated in a private Memorandum dated 23 February 1894 in which he noted the details of three men he considered more likely than Thomas Cutbush, a man accused of stabbing several ladies in the rear and who had been pegged by the Sun as the Ripper, to have committed the Whitechapel murders. Of these three men, the other two being Kosminski, a mentally disturbed Polish Jew and Michael Ostrog, a 'Russian convict' and 'homicidal manic', Macnaghten reckoned that the most likely suspect was:

A Mr M. J. Druitt, said to be a doctor & of good family -- who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, & whose body (which was said to have been upwards of a month in the water) was found in the Thames on 31st December -- or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.

Macnaghten clearly did not get his information on Montague Druitt firsthand; he made several mistakes on Druitt, firstly that he had been a doctor (actually he was a barrister and schoolmaster, although several members of his family, including his father were), and that he committed suicide immediately after the last murder, that of Mary Jane Kelly on 9 November 1888. In fact Montague was alive untill at least 1 December. Despite these mistakes and a lack of firsthand information, Macnaghten became increasingly convinced that Montague was the murderer, although he never named him to the public, perhaps to spare his family's honour. In his autobiography, Days of My Years (1913) Macnaghten commented that:

There can be no doubt that in the room at Miller's Court the madman found ample scope for the opportunities he had all along been seeking, and the probability is that, after his awful glut on this occasion, his brain gave way altogether and he committed suicide ; otherwise the murders would not have ceased. The man, of course, was a sexual maniac...

Macnaghten was not the only one to state his belief that the Whitechapel Murders had been committed by a doctor suffering from 'homicidal mania' who drowned himself in the Thames. His friend, journalist George R. Sims, who probably got most of his inside information from Macnaghten, wrote several articles on Jack the Ripper's crimes in the early 1900's, added to the myth stating that the 'doctor ad been an inmate of a lunatic asylum for some time, and had been liberated and regained his complete freedom.' By this point, the story Montague Druitt had separated considerably from reality. It may have been that both Macnaghten and Sims were soon keen to latch onto and in Sims case elaborate on Druitt's story after reading the 'expert' testimony of L. Forbes Winslow, an asylum proprietor, alienist and self-proclaimed expert on mental illness, who wrote to several newspapers, including the Times in September 1888, stating his opinion that:

I think that the murderer is not of the class of which "Leather Apron" belongs, but of the upper class of society, and I still think that my opinion given to the authorities is the correct one -viz., that the murders have been committed by a lunatic lately discharged from some asylum, or by one who has escaped. If the former, doubtless one who, though suffering from the effects of homicidal mania, is apparently sane on the surface, and consequently been liberated, and is following out the inclinations of his morbid imaginations by wholesale homicide.

However, despite the fact that Macnaghten was clearly convinced that Druitt was the murderer, his identity was never revealed to the public, until the contents of Macnaghten's 1894 Memorandum was discovered by journalist, Dan Farson in 1959 on a visit to Macnaghten's daughter, Lady Christobel Aberconway. However, in 1959, Farson was still not allowed to reveal the name of Macnaghten's suspect in his television programs on the subject of Jack the Ripper, he could only reveal the man's initials, 'M.J.D.'. Montague John Druitt's full name was only finally revealed to the public on the publication of Tom Cullen's When London Walked in Terror in 1965. Since then, several other studies have been published fingering Druitt as Jack the Ripper, including, Farson's Jack the Ripper (1972) and Martin Howell and Keith Skinner's The Ripper Legacy: The Life and Death of Jack the Ripper (1987). However, Druitt's popularity as a Ripper suspect has declined in recent years in favour of working-class suspects living in the vicinity in which the murders took place. Although I myself do not believe Druitt to have been the murderer he is a far more legitimate candidate compared to many of the numerous suspects accused of the crimes over the years due to the fact he was fingered by a high-ranking contemporary police official who apparently had some sort of evidence to back up his accusations.