1. Montague John Druitt was an English barrister and educator who is known for being a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.
45 Facts About Montague Druitt
1. 2.
In November 1888, Montague Druitt lost his post at the school for reasons that remain unclear.
3.
Montague Druitt was the second son and third child of prominent local surgeon William Druitt, and his wife Ann.
4.
Montague Druitt had six brothers and sisters, including an elder brother William who entered the law, and a younger brother Edward who joined the Royal Engineers.
5.
Montague Druitt was educated at Winchester College, where he won a scholarship at the age of 13, and excelled at sports, especially cricket and fives.
6.
Montague Druitt was active in the school's debating society, an interest that might have spawned his desire to become a barrister.
7.
Montague Druitt defended William Wordsworth as "a bulwark of Protestantism", and condemned the execution of King Charles I as "a most dastardly murder that will always attach to England's fair name as a blot".
8.
At New College, Montague Druitt was popular with his peers and was elected Steward of the Junior Common Room.
9.
Montague Druitt played cricket and rugby for the college team, and was the winner of both double and single fives at the university in 1877.
10.
Montague Druitt gained a second class in Classical Moderations in 1878 and graduated with a third class Bachelor of Arts degree in Literae Humaniores in 1880.
11.
On 17 May 1882, two years after graduation, Montague Druitt was admitted to the Inner Temple, one of the qualifying bodies for English barristers.
12.
Montague Druitt was called to the bar on 29 April 1885, and set up a practice as a barrister and special pleader.
13.
Montague Druitt received very little money, if any, from his father's will, although he did receive some of his father's personal possessions.
14.
Montague Druitt rented barristers' chambers at 9 King's Bench Walk in the Inner Temple.
15.
Montague Druitt is listed in the Law List of 1886 as active in the Western Circuit and Winchester Sessions, and for 1887 in the Western Circuit and Hampshire, Portsmouth, and Southampton Assizes.
16.
Montague Druitt's post came with accommodation in Eliot Place, and the long school holidays gave him time to study the law and to pursue his interest in cricket.
17.
In Dorset, Montague Druitt played for the Kingston Park Cricket Club and the Dorset County Cricket Club.
18.
Montague Druitt was particularly noted for his skill as a bowler.
19.
Montague Druitt played for another wandering team, the Butterflies, on 14 June 1883, when they drew against his alma mater Winchester College.
20.
On 5 June 1886, in a match between Blackheath and a gentleman's touring team called the Band of Brothers, led by Lord Harris, Montague Druitt bowled Harris for 14 and took three other wickets.
21.
On 26 May 1884, Montague Druitt was elected to the Marylebone Cricket Club on the recommendation of his fellow Butterflies player Charles Seymour, who proposed him, and noted fielder Vernon Royle, who seconded his nomination.
22.
Montague Druitt was bowled out by Stanley Christopherson, who was playing with his brothers instead of for Blackheath, and in reply Montague Druitt bowled out Christopherson.
23.
On Friday 30 November 1888, Montague Druitt was dismissed from his post at the Blackheath boys' school.
24.
On 31 December 1888, Montague Druitt's body was found floating in the River Thames, off Thornycroft's torpedo works, Chiswick, by a waterman named Henry Winslade.
25.
Stones in Montague Druitt's pockets had kept his body submerged for about a month.
26.
Montague Druitt's mother suffered from depression and was institutionalised from July 1888.
27.
Montague Druitt died in an asylum in Chiswick in 1890.
28.
The coroner's jury concluded that Montague Druitt had committed suicide by drowning while in an unsound state of mind.
29.
Montague Druitt was buried in Wimborne cemetery the next day.
30.
Tuke was a psychiatric doctor with whom Montague Druitt played cricket, and Montague Druitt's mother was committed to Tuke's asylum in 1890.
31.
Montague Druitt's throat had been severed down to the spine.
32.
Many experts believe that the killer was local to Whitechapel, whereas Montague Druitt lived miles away on the other side of the River Thames.
33.
Montague Druitt's chambers were within walking distance of Whitechapel, and his regular rail journey would almost certainly have brought him to Cannon Street station, a few minutes' walk from the East End.
34.
Macnaghten did not join the force until 1889, after the murder of Kelly and the death of Montague Druitt, and was not involved in the investigation directly.
35.
Montague Druitt was a favoured suspect in the Ripper murders throughout the 1960s, until the advent of theories in the 1970s that the murders were not the work of a single serial killer but the result of a conspiracy involving the British royal family and Freemasonry.
36.
One version of the conspiracy promoted by Stephen Knight in his 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution supposed that Montague Druitt was a scapegoat, chosen by officialdom to take the blame for the murders.
37.
Harry Stephen was good friends with Harry Wilson, who had a house in Chiswick, "The Osiers", near to where Montague Druitt's body was found.
38.
Lonsdale's address is a few yards from the school at which Montague Druitt worked and lived, and Lonsdale had been a barrister and had rented legal chambers in King's Bench Walk.
39.
The connections between the Apostles and Montague Druitt led to the suggestion that he was part of the same social set.
40.
Druitt, his mother, and his sister Georgiana, were invited to a ball in honour of Clarence at the home of Lord Wimborne on 17 December 1888, although they did not attend because by that time Montague was dead, his mother was in an asylum, and his sister was expecting her second child.
41.
Leighton concluded that Montague Druitt was innocent, but repeated some of Knight's and Wilding's discredited claims.
42.
Leighton suggested that Montague Druitt could have been murdered, either out of greed by his elder brother William or, as previously suggested by Howells and Skinner, out of fear of exposure by Harry Wilson's homosexual cronies.
43.
The accusations against Clarence, Stephen, Gull and Montague Druitt draw on cultural perceptions of a decadent ruling class, and depict a high-born murderer or murderers preying on lower-class victims.
44.
In fiction, Montague Druitt is depicted as the murderer in the musical Jack the Ripper by Ron Pember and Denis de Marne.
45.
Montague Druitt discovers that Druitt is the murderer and so fakes his suicide in the hope that the police will lose interest once the murders cease.