Montague John Druitt (1857-1888)

Montague John Druitt was revealed as a contemporary suspect in the Macnaughten Memoranda, a document written by Inspector Melville Macnaughten in response to bad press. Although many historians base a good deal of their arguments on his reports, there are many flaws in the information, for example, Macnaughten refers to Druitt as "a doctor of about 41 years of age" when Druitt was actually a barrister and a school master (his father was a medical practitioner though), and really about 31; this true age is what links him more strongly to witness testimony (which gives the age of the Ripper as app. 30). Druitt fits other descriptions of the Ripper, such as sporting a mustache and dressing elegantly.

However, the evidence doesn’t seem to extend far beyond that. Druitt was not known to live anywhere near Whitechapel, and indeed partook in a rigorous cricket game schedule that kept him out of London around crucial times pertaining to the murders.(1)

Druitt was found dead in the Thames river on December 31, 1888. It is estimated that he had committed suicide by throwing himself into the river, after filling his pockets with stones, three weeks earlier than this date. Suicidal tendencies and mental disorder ran in Druitt’s family; it is possible that Druitt had been going insane prior to this date, and threw himself in the river out of sheer madness, preventatively to keep from going mad, or after losing one of his jobs as schoolmaster. It is less likely that he killed himself for the reason given by Macnaughten – that he must have been driven to drown himself after the "awful glut" of killing Kelly, which is why the murders stopped after hers (although there is no psychological evidence to prove that serial killers have a compulsion to continue killing as long as they are alive and not incarcerated).

(1) http://www.casebook.org/suspects/druitt.html

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