Shortly after the known killings of Jack the Ripper had ceased, a man was found dead in the Thames. Authorities recovered his body and, upon searching, discovered a suicide note in his breastpocket. This man’s name was Montague John Dritt, a barrister from a family of surgeons. At the time, policemen believed that Montague may have been the culprit, and that the gruesome state of the corpses could be explained with the precise use of surgical tools, which Montague may have had access to. Furthermore, the contents of the suicide noted that Montague had found himself going insane, and that he had felt it better to die than to live as a madman. Given the conditions that mentally ill people were tragically subjected to during the Victorian age, Montague’s decision is hardly surprising. However, could it be possible that, in a streak of madness, he had committed all of those murders?
Ultimately, the case was dismissed by Whitechapel policemen due to a lack of hard evidence to indicate that Montague was responsible for the killings, as well as the fact that he had no prior criminal record nor was he even a local resident.
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