Jack the Ripper Suspect – Montague John Druitt

Druitt was a barrister who worked to supplement his income as an assistant schoolmaster in Blackheath, London.

He committed suicide by jumping into the river Thames in December 1888, shortly after being sacked from his teaching job. His decomposed body was found in the Thames near Chiswick on 31 December 1888. Some Ripperologists suggest that Druitt was homosexual, that he was dismissed because of this and that it may have driven him to suicide.

However, his mother and his grandmother both suffered mental health problems, and it is possible that he was sacked because of an underlying hereditary psychiatric illness.

His death shortly after the last canonical murder (which took place on 9 November 1888) led Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville Macnaughten to name him as a suspect in a memorandum of 23 February 1894. However, Macnaughten incorrectly described the 31-year-old barrister as a 41-year-old doctor.

On 1 September, the day after the first canonical murder, Druitt was in Dorset playing cricket, and most Ripperologists now believe that the killer was local to Whitechapel, whereas Druitt lived miles away on the other side of the Thames in Kent.

Inspector Frederick Abberline appeared to dismiss Druitt as a serious suspect on the basis that the only evidence against him was the coincidental timing of his suicide shortly after a murder considered by some to be the final one in the canonical series.

Conclusion: Montague John Druitt was not Jack the Ripper.