Montague Druitt
Montague John Druitt was one of the suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders. He came from an upper-middle-class English background, and studied at Winchester College and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he was employed as an assistant schoolmaster at a boarding school and pursued a parallel career in the law. In November 1888, he lost his post at the school for reasons that remain unclear. One month later his body was discovered drowned in the River Thames. His death was found to be a suicide, roughly coincided with the end of the murders attributed to Jack The Ripper.
About Montague Druitt in brief
Montague John Druitt was one of the suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders. He came from an upper-middle-class English background, and studied at Winchester College and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he was employed as an assistant schoolmaster at a boarding school and pursued a parallel career in the law. His main interest outside work was cricket, which he played with many leading players of the time, including Lord Harris and Francis Lacey. In November 1888, he lost his post at the school for reasons that remain unclear. One month later his body was discovered drowned in the River Thames. His death, which was found to be a suicide, roughly coincided with the end of the murders attributed to Jack The Ripper. Private suggestions in the 1890s that he could have committed the crimes became public knowledge in the 1960s and led to the publication of books that proposed him as the murderer. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, however, and many writers from the 1970s onwards have rejected him as a likely suspect. He was the second son and third child of prominent local surgeon William Druitt, and his wife Ann. 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. His father died suddenly from a heart attack in September 1885, leaving an estate valued at £16,579. In a codicil, Druitt’s senior instructed his executors to deduct the money he had advanced to his son from his inheritance from the will he had left him.
In 1882, two years after his father’s death, two of his sons were admitted to the Inner Temple, qualifying them as English bodies for Englishristers. On 17 May 1882 Druitt paid a loan to his father to pay his membership fees with his father’s legacy of £500, and secured his membership of the bar. He died in a car crash in Dorset in 1887. He is buried in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, where he was christened at the Minster by his maternal great-uncle, Reverend William Mayo. He won a scholarship at the age of 13, and excelled at sports, especially cricket and fives. In his final year at Winchester, 1875–76,. he was Prefect of Chapel, treasurer of the debating society, school fives champion, and opening bowler for the cricket team. In June 1876, he played cricket for the school team against Eton College, which won the match with a team including cricketing luminaries Ivo Bligh and Kynaston Studd, as well as a future Principal Private Secretary at the Home Office Evelyn Ruggles-Brise. He gained a second class in Classical Moderations in 1878 and graduated with a third class Bachelor of Arts degree in Literae Humaniores in 1880. In 1880, he bowled out William Patterson, who later captained Kent County Cricket Club. His youngest brother, Arthur, entered New College in 1882.
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This page is based on the article Montague Druitt published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
