Days of My Years ( Jack the Ripper related ) de MacNaghten, Sir Melville ( Late Chief of the Criminal investigation Department, Scotland Yard )

N.Y. / London: Longmas, Green & Co / Edward Arnold, 1914, 1st Edition, 1st Printing -----------hard cover, a solid Very Good copy, lightly soiled red cloth, gently bumped corners, a bit of sunning to the spine, no dustjacket, there are two states of this book -- when published there was a problem with the title/copyright page of this book ---copyright information was not included on the copyright page ---some copies have had the title page neatly removed and replaced with a correct title/copyright page ---this copy is the first state edition with the blank copyright page, 300 pages, b&w photo of MacNaghten as the frontispiece, tissue guard is intact, --- contents include: Preface; Births & Boyhood; Eton Memories; A Start in Life - Bengal Forty Years Ago; Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper; early Days at the Yard; The Hampstead Murder; Bombs & Their Makers; Sun Yat Sen; The Strange Story of Adolph Beck; Motiveless Murders; Missing Children - and Worse; Blackmailers & Blackmailees; The Muswell Hill & Stepney Murders; Finger Prints in General & the Deptford Murder in Particular; Assassinations; A Lion Twice Bearded in his Den; Railway Tragedies; Sidelights on the Crippen Case; Half a day with Bloodhounds - Whitechapel & Sevenoaks - Constables Courageous; " Days " ( and Nights ) in London & Paris; The Murder of the Strolling Player Off Battersea Park Road; Diurnal Oddments; Foreign Desperadoes - sidney Street & Tottenham; Two Dinners to End the " Days "; Two Farewells & Three Loving Cups, a better condition copy than normally seen when seen at all (excluding those odious printondemand copies flooding the market currently) ---from Wikipedia: ---"The youngest of fifteen children of Elliot Macnaghten, the last Chairman of the British East India Company, Macnaghten was educated at Eton. After leaving school in 1872, he went to India to run his father's tea estates in Bengal and remained there until 1888, albeit with occasional visits back home. In 1881 he was assaulted by Indian land rioters and as a result, became friends with James Monro, who was District Judge and Inspector-General in the Bombay Presidency at the time. On 3 October 1878 he married Dora Emily Sanderson, the daughter of a canon from Chichester; they eventually had two sons and two daughters. Upon his return to England, Macnaghten was offered the post of first Chief Constable (CID) in the Metropolitan Police by Monro, who by that time had become the first Assistant Commissioner (Crime); however this appointment was opposed by Charles Warren, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, allegedly due to the beating he took by "the Hindoos" back in Bengal; but the real reason seemed to be that Warren and Monro did not get along well from the beginning. Warren's rejection of MacNaghten widened the rift between the two men, resulting in Monro's resignation and his transfer to Special Branch by the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews. However, due to the continuous disagreements with Home Secretary Matthews, Commissioner Warren chose to resign on 9 November 1888. Monro was brought in to succeed him as Commissioner. With this turn of events, Macnaghten was brought in with the position of Assistant Chief Constable in June 1889; he was later promoted to Chief Constable in 1890, following the unexpected death of the first incumbent, Adolphus Williamson. Even though he was not directly involved with the investigation of the Ripper killings, like most members of the Metropolitan Police, Macnaghten took an active interest in the case. As Chief Constable he had access to police records on the case; as a result of his own investigation he wrote a confidential report dated February 23, 1894; however, the report was not publicly available until 1959 and the complete report was not available or viewing and reproduction until 2002. This report proved influential for Ripper research, for it established the canonical victims of the serial killer at five, as well as naming three possible suspects. Although some information about the suspect he believed most likely to have been the murderer had been available before the turn of the century, the name of the suspect was not made public until 1959. Macnaghten's most likely suspect was Montague John Druitt, a barrister turned teacher who allegedly committed suicide sometime in December 1888. Unfortunately, Macnaghten, in writing from memory, committed many factual errors in his report regarding Druitt. Despite the errors, his allegation seemed to be plausible at first glance, but there is no evidence of contemporary police suspicion against him at the time of the murders; indeed, recent research could find no concrete evidence that Druitt was indeed the Ripper. Sir James Monro's grandson Christopher was told by his father, Douglas Monro, that Sir James believed that Druitt was the Ripper but was prevented from saying so because Druitt's elder brother William put pressure on the Government. He said that if his brother was named as the Ripper he would disclose the presence of homosexuals in high positions in several areas of public life. Abberline, the detective who led the investigation, did not believe that Druitt was the Ripper. In an interview some years later he said that he had heard "that story but what did it amount to?" He felt that Druitt had simply died at a time that might explain the end of the Ripper murders. He appears to have had little knowledge of him, referring erroneously as a doctor. Macnaghten's daughter, Lady Christabel Aberconway, made a transcript of the notes that he used to dictate his report to his elder daughter and in 1959 she showed it to the author Daniel Farson. He later wrote a book around it. However, in 1992 a friend Michael Thornton told the Sunday Express that she had remarked that in accusing Druitt, her father had merely "followed the official line" and the truth "could have made the Throne totter". The second of Macnaghten's three suspects was Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who lived in Whitechapel and was committed to an insane asylum in 1891. While not on the top of the list as Druitt, he was certainly suspected by Robert Anderson, the man who succeeded Monro as Assistant Commissioner, with apparent confirmation by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, Anderson's desk officer. As with Druitt, there is no concrete evidence to support this allegation, and it is suggested that naming Kosminski as a suspect seemed to greater reflect anti-semitism than a genuine connection to the case. In a copy of a book by Anderson found in his effects many years later, Swanson referred to a secret identification in which an unnamed Jewish witness named Kosminski as the Ripper but refused to testify against a fellow Jew. This seems to have been a very doubtful exercise and as there were only two known Jewish witnesses and neither of them were likely to have identified Kosminski. It may be that Kosminski was seen as a plausible scapegoat because had he been charged and named, he would almost certainly have been found unfit to plead - he suffered from dementia and hallucinations and with a phobia about taking food from another man's hand, he fed on scraps that he found in the gutters. He had been charged and named, however, he would probably have been accepted as Jack the Ripper. The third suspect in Macnaghten's report was a man named Michael Ostrog, a Russian-born thief and con man who affected several aliases and disguises and was detained in asylums in several occasions. Again there is little to support this suspicion against Ostrog: records indicated that he was imprisoned in France during the murders; the fact that Ostrog was arrested and imprisoned before the report was written raises the question of why Ostrog was included at all as a viable suspect. In 1900 Macnaghten served in the Belper Committee to inquire about "the working of the method of Identification of Criminals by Measurement and Fingerprints". As the committee recommended the use of fingerprints as a means of identification over bertillonage, largely due to the testimony of Edward Henry on their respective merits. When Henry was appointed Commissioner in 1903, succeeding Sir Edward Bradford, Macnaghten was appointed Assistant Commissioner (Crime) and became involved in many of the most famous cases in the history of the Metropolitan Police, including the Hawley Harvey Crippen case and the Farrow double murder case, which resulted in the conviction and hanging of the Albert and Alfred Stratton largely on the basis on fingerprint evidence. Macnaghten was knighted in the 1907 Birthday Honours. In the 1912 New Year Honours, he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). He was awarded the King's Police Medal (KPM) in the 1913 New Year Honours. He was also a Knight Commander of the White Military Order of Spain and a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog. However, in 1911 Macnaghten was experiencing the first signs of ill-health; even a trip to Australia the following year failed to improve matters. He was forced to retire from his job in 1913. In 1914 he published his memoirs Days of my Years. He also made a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica into English verse, an effort to which he devoted the last ten years of his life. Macnaghten died on 12 May 1921 at Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster"---, any image directly beside this listing is the actual book and not a generic photo. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/No Jacket. Illus. by No Dustjacket.