MICHAEL OSTROG
Number two on the list of suspects was Michael Ostrog, a Russian Jew, who was born in 1833, probably in Russia, but we are not sure. Ostrog was also known as Bertrand Ashley, Claude Clayton, Dr Grant Max Grief Gosslar, Ashley Nabokoff, Orloff, Count Sobieski and Max Sobiekski.
Ostrog was what we would probably call today a career criminal. This is not to say that he actually made a living from his crimes, because most of them were very petty to say the least:
1863 While using the alias Max Grief (Kaife) Gosslar, Ostrog committed theft at Oxford College, and was soon after sentenced to ten months in prison.
1864 Convicted at Cambridge and sentenced to three months in prison. In July, he appeared in Tunbridge Wells under the name Count Sobieski. Imprisoned in December and sentenced to eight months.
1866 Acquitted on charges of fraud in January. On 19 March he stole a gold watch and other articles from a woman in Maidstone. He committed similar thefts in April and was duly arrested in August, and sentenced to seven years in prison.
1873 Released from prison in May, he committed numerous other thefts, and subsequently was arrested by Superintendent Oswell in Burton-on-Trent. He produced a revolver at the police station and nearly shot his captors.
1874 Convicted in January and sentenced to ten years in prison.
1883 Released from prison in August.
1887 Arrested for theft of a metal tankard in July and sentenced to six months’ hard labour in September. He was listed as suffering from ‘mania’ on 30 September.
1888 Released on 10 March as ‘cured’. He was mentioned in Police Gazette , in October, as a ‘Dangerous man, who failed to report. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Paris for theft on 18 November.
For the next sixteen years, Ostrog continued to court the attention of the authorities for one reason or another:
1891 Committed to the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum.
1894 Charged for theft at Eton.
1898 Charged in Woolwich for the theft of books.
1900 Imprisoned for theft of a microscope at London Hospital, Whitechapel. He was known to be partially paralysed by this time.
1904 Released from prison and entered St Giles Christian Mission, Holborn. Nothing further is known of Ostrog after this time.
Not a very impressive record at all, but like Kosminski, not one to particularly connect him as a suspect to the Ripper murders. Police records (not Abberline) had Michael Ostrog down as ‘A mad Russian doctor and a convict and unquestionably homicidal maniac’. Ostrog was said to be ‘Habitually cruel to women, and for a long time was known to have carried about with him surgical knives and other instruments; his antecedents were of the very worst and his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could never be satisfactorily accounted for’. This account does not seem to tie in at all with the rather pathetic criminality we see in his criminal record.
Ostrog was certified insane while in Wandsworth prison, and was sent to the Surrey pauper mental asylum on 30 September 1887, where he was described as ‘50 years of age, Jewish, a surgeon, married and suffering from mania’. He was released on 10 March 1888 and continued his criminal career.
If the records of his birth were true, it would have made him at least 55 years of age at the time of the Whitechapel murders. This would make him much older than any of the eyewitness sightings of a Ripper suspect, who was usually described as 28 to 35 years old. Ostrog also did not match the suspect’s build or general description, which described the Ripper as a short, stout man, just a little taller than his victims, with fair to medium brown hair; whereas Ostrog was dark skinned with dark brown eyes, grey hair and was 5ft 11in tall.
The notes that Ostrog was a doctor, had some sort of medical training or carried surgical knives, and was habitually cruel to women, are also completely unfounded. There is absolutely no evidence throughout his long criminal career that Ostrog used violence on anyone, particularly women.
The whole case against Ostrog, as with Kosminski, seems to be based on his mental instability and ethnicity.
FRANCIS TUMBLETY
Number three on the list of suspects was neither Jewish nor mentally disturbed; Francis Tumblety was born in Ireland in 1833, and along with his family, including ten brothers and sisters, immigrated to Rochester, New York, just a few years after his birth. Nothing much is known of his early years in the USA, but by the time he was in his early thirties, he was making a very good living by posing as an ‘Indian Herb’ doctor throughout the United States and Canada, and was commonly perceived as a misogynistic quack.
During the mid–1860s one of his patients died in mysterious circumstances. The police instigated an investigation into Tumblety and his methods, but not enough evidence could be found to link him to the woman’s death, and the case was eventually dropped. In 1865, he was arrested in St Louis and held in prison for three weeks, accused of being a conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was eventually released without charge, as he was found to be using an alias similar to the name of a wanted man at the time.
By 1888, the year of the Ripper murders, Tumblety had left the USA and had set up home in England. On 7 November of that year he was arrested and charged with engaging in a homosexual act, which was illegal at the time. He was granted bail while awaiting trial, which was scheduled to take place on the next magistrates’ court sitting on the 16th of the same month. Tumblety was re-arrested on the 14th and re-bailed on the 16th.
These dates are important, as they show that Tumblety was actually on the streets of London on 9 November, the date Mary Kelly was murdered.
Tumblety didn’t wait around for his trial to begin, and sometime between 14 and 16 November, he fled to France under an assumed name, and from there to the USA.
Tumblety’s notoriety preceded him, and the US newspapers soon discovered his whereabouts and printed reports of how his arrest in England was connected to the Ripper murders. The American press also claimed that Scotland Yard were trying to extradite him back to England, but these allegations were not confirmed by the British press or the London police, who stated: ‘There is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he is under bond in London is not extraditable.’
As with all of the suspects, there was no concrete evidence linking Tumblety to the Ripper murders but there was an abundance of circumstantial evidence; so much so, in fact, that the senior police officer in charge of Tumblety’s case was given the assistance of six English detectives and two clerks. This led to Tumblety becoming one of the major suspects in the Ripper case. After all, Scotland Yard would hardly assign a team of six detectives to a case where the suspect was only accused of an indecency charge. This action by the police threw suspicion on Tumblety of something far worse.
A former Union colonel from the Civil War period gave an interview with a newspaper, where he recalled attending a dinner party that Tumblety had thrown, in which he had showed guests to a small attic room where he kept what he referred to as his anatomical museum. The room was filled with glass jars and cases. Tumblety lined up a number of the jars on a table, and told his guests that they contained the wombs of women of every social class. He then proceeded to break into a long and vehement speech, in which he revealed that he had once been married to an older woman who had let him down badly when he found out that she was in fact a prostitute. He denounced all women, especially those he described as ‘fallen women’, like his ex-wife.
Tumblety was, if nothing else, a fantasist. He used to boast of having met Charles Dickens during his frequent trips to London, though there was no proof of this whatsoever.
When Tumblety arrived in London in 1888, he took lodgings in Batty Street, which is just a couple of minutes walk away from Whitechapel, which, in turn, is right in the heart of what was to become known as Ripper territory.
The landlady of the lodging house in Batty Street later reported that one of the lodgers had vanished af
ter asking her to wash a shirt, which was steeped in blood. She never identified Tumblety as this lodger, but it is a very strong coincidence that he happened to be a lodger at that same address.
Tumblety was also alleged to be an Irish-American Fenian and possibly part of a plan to assassinate Arthur James Balfour, who at the time of the alleged plot was Chief Secretary of Ireland. Balfour later served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from July 1902 to December 1905.
It is also believed that he had a role in what became known as the Phoenix Park murders, which was the name given to the assassination on 6 May 1882 of Lord Frederick Cavendish, British Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, his undersecretary, in Phoenix Park, Dublin. They were stabbed to death by members of the ‘Invincibles’, a terrorist splinter group of the Fenian movement.
A number of different men were arrested and tried for these murders, two of whom turned state’s evidence, five were hanged and three were sentenced to penal servitude. One man, who was apparently never caught, was someone whose description matched very closely to that of Francis Tumblety.
Being a misogynist or a fantasist, or even a member of an extremist political group, might well be damning features, if indeed proven to be true, but these features do not prove or disprove Tumblety’s involvement in the Ripper case. There was no doubt that there were some very strong indications that Tumblety was in some way involved in this case, which made Abberline, and the police in general, very suspicious of him; but it was not until after his death in 1903 that several other vital and very damning pieces of evidence came to light.
When an inventory of his personal belongings was taken after his death, it was noted that he had several pieces of extremely expensive jewellery, $1,000 in bonds and over $430 in cash. He also had two very cheap fake gold rings, which didn’t fit in at all with his general style and demeanour; their value was approximately $2, and they matched exactly the description of the rings that were taken from the body of Annie Chapman.
To sum up the evidence pointing to Tumblety’s involvement in the case, we have the following:
1. Tumblety was known for his hatred of women.
2. His wife had worked as a prostitute whilst married to him.
3. He had a wide knowledge of anatomy and collected body parts in jars, which he readily showed to guests.
4. The murders ceased when he fled the country.
5. He was noted on police files at the time as a person of bad character.
6. It was a fact that Scotland Yard contacted the New York Police Department for a copy of his handwriting. This was just after Catherine Eddowes’ death, which indicates that he was high on their suspect list.
7. The rings thought to have belonged to Annie Chapman were found in Tumblety’s inventory after his death.
8. He lived in the Whitechapel area at the time of Mary Kelly’s death.
These are all very strong points that add to the case against Francis Tumblety. There were other lesser points which nevertheless still scored against him, such as his use of aliases and the fact that Scotland Yard pursued him to New York after he jumped bail on what was a relatively small misdemeanour. If we add to these the other allegations, such as his involvement in the Fenian movement and the death of one of his patients in mysterious circumstances when he was posing as an ‘Indian Herb’ doctor during the mid–1860s, then I would say the case against him is very strong indeed.
Tumblety eventually returned to the USA and settled down with a female relative, whose house also served as his office. He died in 1903 of heart disease at the age of 73.
MONTAGUE JOHN DRUITT
Next on our list is Montague John Druitt, who came from a distinguished medical family, from Wimborne, Dorset. His father, William, was the town’s leading surgeon and his uncle Robert and cousin Lionel were also doctors.
In 1870 Druitt won a scholarship to Winchester College and later graduated to the University of Oxford. On 17 May 1882, two years after graduation, Druitt was admitted to the Inner Temple, one of the qualifying bodies for English barristers. He paid his membership fees with a loan from his father, which was secured against an inheritance legacy of £500 he had promised him (equivalent to about £45,000 today).
Druitt was called to the Bar on 29 April 1885, and set up a practice as a barrister. Five months later, in September 1885, Druitt’s father died suddenly from a heart attack. He left an estate valued at £16,579, which would be equivalent to approximately £1.5 million today.
Unfortunately for Montague Druitt, most of his father’s estate went to his wife Ann, three unmarried daughters, Georgiana, Edith and Ethel, and his eldest son William. Druitt senior had even instructed the executors of his will to deduct the £500 he had advanced to his son from his legacy, leaving very little money, if any at all, for Montague Druitt, although he did receive some of his father’s personal possessions.
Druitt rented legal chambers at 9 King’s Bench Walk in the Inner Temple. During this period, it was mostly just the very wealthy who could afford to take out legal action, and only one in eight qualified barristers was able to make a living from the law.
To supplement his income Druitt found work as an assistant schoolmaster at George Valentine’s Boarding School, 9 Eliot Place, Blackheath, London. The school had quite a long and prestigious history, with such distinguished students as Benjamin Disraeli. Druitt’s post came with accommodation in Eliot Place, and the long school holidays gave him time to follow up his law studies and pursue his interest in cricket.
Druitt continued his work at the school for the next three years, while simultaneously continuing with his legal career. People who knew him, including staff at the school, said that he seemed very happy during this period. He had a busy social life centred around sport, and was the secretary and treasurer of the local Blackheath Cricket Club as well as regularly turning out for other various teams.
In 1888, his mother’s health started to deteriorate, but unfortunately it was not just her bodily health, but her mental health as well. In July of that year, she attempted to commit suicide, which led to her being permanently hospitalised in a number of private asylums and clinics until her death. In trying to sum up Druitt, we need to remember that this was the same year that the Ripper murders began. It has been known in other such cases that losing a parent in such a way can have a significant bearing on an offspring’s life, and could even act as a catalyst for their descent into mayhem and murder. Mental illness certainly ran in Druitt’s family: his maternal grandmother and aunt had committed suicide and his sister was also to do so, although many years later.
By early December of that same year, Druitt’s brother William began to get worried about him, as he hadn’t heard from him for nearly two weeks, and normally they spoke on a regular basis. He contacted Druitt’s chambers, where he was told that he had not been seen for over a week. He then travelled immediately to the school in Blackheath, where he learned that his brother had got into serious trouble at the school and been dismissed nearly two weeks earlier. A note written by Druitt and addressed to William was found in Druitt’s room in Blackheath. It read: ‘Since Friday I felt that I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.’
On Monday 31 December, Henry Winslade, a Thames waterman, discovered the decomposed body of Montague Druitt at approximately 1 p.m., floating in the water just off Thorneycroft’s Wharf, near Chiswick. He took the body ashore and notified the authorities. Police Constable George Moulston made a complete listing of possessions found on the then unidentified corpse:
1. Four large stones in each pocket.
2. £2 17s 2d.
3. A cheque for £50 and another for £16.
4. Silver watch on a gold chain with a spade guinea as a seal.
5. Pair of kid gloves.
6. White handkerchief.
7. First-class half-season rail ticket from Blackheath to London.
8. Second-half return ticket from Hammersmith to Charing Cross dat
ed 1 December 1888.
At the inquest into his death, a verdict was returned of suicide while of unsound mind.
William Druitt’s first thoughts on the subject were that his brother had been unable to cope with the loss of both his parents within the short space of three years. But then he started to hear rumours about why Druitt was dismissed from his post at Blackheath school. The authorities at the school would not divulge the reason, but after speaking to friends and colleagues of Druitt, William started to form his own ideas that his brother was dismissed for homosexual tendencies and for molesting students. This was, of course, nothing more than pure conjecture on William’s part, but as far as he was concerned, it could quite well have been the reason behind his brother’s suicide; the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.
If we accept this as fact, we have Montague John Druitt, a reasonably successful barrister, suddenly overcome with grief about being dismissed from his job at the school; what would happen if his vice was discovered by his friends and family? How would it be taken by his colleagues in chambers? Would he still be able to practise law at his firm? And probably more important to him, would he be able to bear the embarrassment of it all?
We now know that he was awarded some sort of job settlement payment from his school, so if these conjectures are correct, he would have left the school with his two settlement cheques in his pocket, as indeed was found on his body when it was fished from the Thames. He would have skulked home with thoughts of suicide entering into his mind. The next morning, after writing the suicide note to his brother, he then would have headed towards the Thames, pausing only to gather some stones, four of which he placed in each pocket. A slight pause maybe, and then he would have thrown himself into the icy waters of the Thames, his body not to be discovered until 31 December, almost three weeks later.
These assertions all sound very laudable, but they have never been proven; they are nothing more than assertions. Also, they most definitely do not link Druitt to the Ripper murders in any way, yet the chief constable of Scotland Yard, Melville Macnaghten, considered Druitt to be his prime suspect; a theory which no other police officer, including Abberline, supported.
Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper Page 16