Career
On 17 May 1882, two years after graduation, Druitt was admitted to the Inner Temple, one of the qualifying bodies for English barristers. His father had promised him a legacy of £500 (equivalent to £37,000 today), and Druitt paid his membership fees with a loan from his father secured against the inheritance. He was called to the bar on 29 April 1885, and set up a practice as a barrister and special pleader. Druitt's father died suddenly from a heart attack in September 1885, leaving an estate valued at £16,579 (equivalent to £1,327,000 today). In a codicil, Druitt senior instructed his executors to deduct the money he had advanced to his son from the legacy of £500. Montague received very little money, if any, from his father's will, although he did receive some of his father's personal possessions. Most of Dr Druitt's estate went to his wife Ann, three unmarried daughters (Georgiana, Edith and Ethel), and eldest son William.
Druitt rented legal chambers at 9 King's Bench Walk in the Inner Temple. In the late Victorian era only the wealthy could afford legal action, and only one in eight qualified barristers was able to make a living from the law. While some of Druitt's biographers claim his practice did not flourish, others suppose that it provided him with a relatively substantial income on the basis of his costly lease of chambers and the value of his estate at death. He 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.
To supplement his income and help pay for his legal training, Druitt worked as an assistant schoolmaster at George Valentine's boarding school, 9 Eliot Place, Blackheath, London, from 1880. The school had a long and distinguished history; Benjamin Disraeli had been a pupil there in the 1810s, and boys from the school had been playmates of a younger son of Queen Victoria, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who as a boy in the 1860s had lived nearby at Greenwich Park. 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.
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