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that ‘his friends have not seen him’. The problem with Vasiliev is that no-one may have ever seen him. An article in the London Star for 17 November 1888, entitled ‘A Fictional French “Ripper”’ relayed doubts about his story. It quoted an interview with M Macé, a former head of the Sureté, who stated that no such murders occurred in Paris in 1872. This seemingly conclusive rubbishing did little to stop other papers continuing to print and embellish Vasiliev’s tale. In an essay on the articles for www.casebook.co.uk, Stepan Poberowski notes that several of these articles resemble stories planted in other newspapers by the Ochrana. These articles, he suggests, were part of a provocation campaign to force the Met to interrogate Russian immigrants. Any information gathered would be fed back to the Ochrana via their spies at Scotland Yard. If Vasiliev was a fictional tool of provocation, his usefulness ended when the murders stopped. By January 1889 newspapers no longer mentioned him, and there is no indication that he was ever actively sought as a genuine suspect.

Montague John Druitt (1857–1888)

Fingered by Tom Cullen in Autumn of Terror (1965), Daniel Farson in Jack the Ripper (1972), Martin Howells and Keith Skinner in The Ripper Legacy (1987), John Wilding in Jack the Ripper Revealed (1993)

One of three suspects proposed by Sir Melville Macnaghten, who became assistant Chief Constable of the CID six months after Mary Kelly’s murder. The document, known as ‘the Macnaghten Memoranda’ was discovered by Daniel Farson in 1959 and was written ostensibly to discredit The Sun’s Thomas Cutbush theory (see also: Kosminski, Ostrog).

A barrister, schoolmaster, gentleman and cricket ace, Druitt’s body was fished from the Thames at Chiswick on 31 December 1888. It had been in the water for approximately a month and there were four large stones in the coat pockets. A note to his brother,William, read to the effect: ‘Since Friday I felt that I was going to be like mother [i.e. incarcerated in an asylum] and it would be best for all concerned if I were to die.’

Melancholia was a common trait in the family. Several of Druitt’s immediate family had attempted or committed suicide. On or around 30 November, Druitt, for reasons unknown, was fired from his teaching post. William later learned that Druitt had been dismissed after getting into serious trouble at the school. The cause of this trouble is unclear but it seems to have been the final straw. By the time William was told of his absence from chambers, Druitt had already been missing, probably dead, for over a week.

There is no real evidence to suggest that Druitt was the Ripper. Sir Melville Macnaghten appears to be the first to really push for him as a suspect. But the only proof behind his conviction of Druitt’s guilt is unspecified ‘private information (from which) I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer’. What information, and from what source, was lost when Macnaghten later destroyed all his personal papers relating to the matter. Further difficulties arise. Druitt was a tall, slim Anglo-Saxon, which goes against the bulk of eyewitness descriptions. Nor is there a clear way to place Druitt in the East End. Several of his cricket engagements (one in Dorset) clash with the times of the murders.

In 1961, Daniel Farson went to Australia in search of a document that supposedly proved Druitt’s guilt. ‘The East End Murderer – I Knew Him’ was allegedly written by his cousin Lionel, a doctor who had emigrated in 1886. Such tantalising evidence, as is often the case, proved to be a hoax. There remains nothing solid to place Druitt as Jack. Abberline was certainly unimpressed by the theory. When asked about Druitt in 1903, he said, ‘You can state most emphatically that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago. It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead.’

What ties Druitt to the Ripper is his timely suicide. Unexplained matters such as the increasingly violent mutilations