The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper Read Online Free PDF Page B

literature to the present day, all thanks to McCormick’s fanciful writing. What is apparent is that McCormick’s ideas stemmed from sources that probably didn’t exist. His mysterious Russian doctor theory signalled the end of what was essentially a period of sporadic solutions fuelled by hearsay and the dubious recollections of sundry individuals, both in Britain and abroad. Like Edwin Woodhall’s brush with quasi-racist rhetoric in the era of rising fascism in Europe, McCormick’s theory reflected the developing ‘Cold War’ between East and West, brewing up a story that would put the most convoluted plot of any spy thriller to shame. Espionagewas very much the rage in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a result of the changing political climate; the classy James Bond novels of Ian Fleming were well established and were soon to be joined by works by other popular writers of the genre such as John le Carré and Len Deighton. The Ripper crimes were now steadily becoming an international phenomenon, and it seemed that there was now a rapidly growing band of enthusiasts willing to lend their special knowledge and opinion to the fascination with solving what was by now considered to be the world’s greatest crime mystery.
    Ironically, as McCormick twisted and turned with his elaborate tale, the photographer, journalist and broadcaster Daniel Farson made an important discovery. While researching a series of television programmes for ATV in the UK entitled
Farson’s Guide to the British
, 17 Farson had decided to devote some of his air-time to the mystery of Jack the Ripper. Often well connected, he had, purely by luck it seems, been introduced to Christobel McLaren, 2nd Baroness Aberconway, the daughter of Sir Melville Macnaghten, and she showed him the typed and handwritten transcriptions she had made of her late father’s 1894 memoranda, which named the suspects Druitt, Kosminski and Ostrog. This artefact – now known as the ‘Aberconway version’ – was an important find to say the least and has since been considered as the initiation of serious post-war studies on the Ripper case. It must be remembered that for all the hint-dropping of Macnaghten, Anderson and Swanson
et al.
, the actual names of suspects were not included in anything that was to be published. Macnaghten’s memoranda were for private and official use, and Swanson’s marginalia were the private notation of a dear friend’s autobiography. Now, by seeing the names Druitt, Ostrog and Kosminski for the first time, Farson was well placed to make these findings public on television.
    Farson set his store by Macnaghten’s first suspect, Druitt. It is no doubt likely that this information was familiar to other police officials of Macnaghten’s day, for several hints had previously been made by various individuals that the Ripper had drowned in the Thames after the Mary Kelly murder. One of these claims was alleged to have been made as early as 1889 to Albert Bachert, the Mile End Vigilance Committee leader who had taken over from the eminent George Lusk that year. Bachert’s story was that he had been advised to disband the Vigilance Committee owing to the fact that the Ripper’s body had been found floating in the Thames at the end of 1888. It was quite possible that he was encouraged to do this merely to stop Bachert being a nuisance. However the story itself emanated once again from Donald McCormick and Dr Thomas Dutton’s elusive ‘Chronicle of Crime’.
    When Farson’s programme was broadcast, the name of the main suspect was given as ‘M.J.D.’ – this was in accordance with Baroness Aberconway’s request not to make the full name public. As previously observed, it appeared that Macnaghten’s notes had got a few biographical details wrong, for Druitt was thirty-one when he died, not forty-one as was stated. Nor was he a doctor, but a barrister. Whatever the plausibility of Druitt’s candidacy for the Whitechapel murderer, he was