Francis Thompson, Virchow’s Technique, and Bond’s Misreading

[Richard Patterson]

For more than a century, the authority of Dr. Thomas Bond has hung over the Jack the Ripper case like a gavel striking down final judgment. Bond, the Home Office surgeon who examined Mary Jane Kelly’s remains in November 1888, left behind a report whose conclusion became orthodoxy: the killer, he insisted, required no anatomical or surgical training; in fact, the mutilations “do not even suggest anatomical knowledge.” His words became a cornerstone for dismissing medically trained suspects. If a qualified surgeon declared that no surgeon was necessary, the debate seemed closed.

But the problem is not what Bond saw. It is what Bond did not see. He was trained in the 1860s, at a time when organ removal was not part of standard autopsy procedure in Britain. He judged the Whitechapel mutilations against a frame of reference already outdated by 1888. What looked like meaningless “hacking” to him was in fact the new language of a different anatomical school — one he had never studied.

That school belonged to Rudolf Virchow, the German pathologist who revolutionized autopsy by insisting on systematic organ removal. Virchow’s method, disseminated through his students and lectures, reached England through Julius Dreschfeld at Owens College, Manchester. And sitting in Dreschfeld’s classroom, scalpel in hand for six full years, was Francis Thompson.

Bond’s Blind Spot

Bond’s autopsy notes on Kelly include lines often quoted: “The injuries were inflicted by a person without any scientific knowledge of the subject” and “there are no signs of anatomical knowledge.” These phrases have been recycled in Ripper literature as if they were definitive. But they reflect the limits of Bond’s education, not the limits of the killer.

Bond had learned the classic British post-mortem style — inspection of cavities, description of gross lesions, but not the routine removal of organs. To him, a kidney taken out through an abdominal incision in dim light looked clumsy, unnecessary, even amateurish. He expected, if a medical man were at work, a display of neatness, a surgeon’s demonstration piece. Instead he saw rough butchery.

What he could not recognize was that a different method existed, one not concerned with aesthetics, but with systematically separating and examining internal organs. This was Virchow’s method. And unless one had been trained in it, the Whitechapel mutilations would appear alien, even incomprehensible.

Virchow and the New Autopsy

Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) is remembered as the father of modern pathology. Among his many innovations was the insistence that a proper autopsy required the removal and individual study of every organ. No longer would the pathologist merely peer into the body; he would take out the liver, kidneys, uterus, stomach, weigh them, cut them in sections, compare them. Virchow’s technique emphasized a single knife — no elaborate surgical kit, just one dissection blade wielded with methodical precision.

This approach was considered radical in Britain in the 1870s. Many practitioners thought it excessive or even destructive. But to Virchow’s students, it became second nature. Among those students was Julius Dreschfeld (1845–1907), a German-Jewish physician who became Professor of Pathology at Owens College, Manchester. Dreschfeld brought Virchow’s teaching to England, publishing notes on the new method and training a generation of British students in organ removal.

Francis Thompson in the Dissecting Room

Francis Thompson entered Owens College in 1877 and studied medicine for six years. He was a poor student, inattentive in exams, but diligent in the dissecting room. Records show he passed his anatomy classes, attended pathology lectures, and practiced repeated dissections. He later wrote of his indifference to clinical practice but fascination with the knife.

Most importantly, Thompson’s years at Owens coincided with Dreschfeld’s tenure. He was directly exposed to Virchow’s method. Where Bond saw chaos, Thompson had been taught to see system. To remove a kidney, a uterus, or sections of the bowel with a single blade was not a mad improvisation — it was training.

And we know Thompson retained his scalpel. In a letter dated January 1889, he admits he had been shaving with his dissecting knife until it grew too blunt. That places the very tool in his pocket during the Ripper autumn.

The Murders through a Virchow Lens

Consider Catherine Eddowes, found in Mitre Square in September 1888. Her kidney and uterus were missing. To Bond, this was “the work of a man without knowledge.” To a Virchow student, it was elementary: kidneys and uterus were organs to be removed and weighed in the new autopsy protocol.

Annie Chapman’s case is similar. Her uterus was taken, and her intestines displaced over her shoulder. Bond read this as grotesque excess. A Virchow student would recognize the sequence: open abdomen, remove organ, set aside viscera.

Mary Kelly’s case was the most extreme. Bond interpreted the scattered organs as proof of frenzy. But Virchow’s method did not prize tidiness. It was about sequential removal, sometimes leaving organs piled together. The uterus and kidneys again were central. Bond could not square what he saw with his training. But that mismatch speaks more to him than to the killer.

Bond versus Thompson

Thus the irony: Bond’s verdict, long used to exclude medical suspects, actually strengthens the case for one man. Bond didn’t recognize Virchow because he never studied it. Thompson did.

• Bond: trained in pre-Virchow Britain, expecting neat incisions and demonstrations.
• Thompson: trained under Dreschfeld at Owens, drilled in Virchow’s organ-removal system.
• Bond: saw chaos, concluded “no anatomical knowledge.”
• Thompson: could have produced exactly what Bond saw, because it was anatomical knowledge — just not Bond’s.

The Broader Profile

Of course, method alone does not make a murderer. But Thompson’s biography slots into the larger frame with disturbing precision:

• Medical training: Six years, with dissection and pathology.
• Tool: A personal scalpel he admitted carrying.
• Geography: Living as a vagrant in Whitechapel during the murders, documented at Providence Row refuge.
• Psychology: Laudanum addiction, obsession with a prostitute who fled him, violent and misogynistic writings.
• Timeline: Murders stop when Thompson is hospitalized in late 1888.
• Police profile: Major Henry Smith’s 1910 description — ex-medical student, asylum, prostitute connections, coin fraud, Rupert Street — matches Thompson uniquely.

When you add to these factors that Thompson alone had the specific Virchow training needed to make sense of the mutilations, the case becomes stronger, not weaker.

Implications for Ripperology

For too long, Bond’s authority has been treated as a trump card. If Bond said “no medical knowledge,” then no medical suspect need apply. But authority is not infallibility. Bond’s dismissal reflects the parallax of education — he saw through 1860s eyes what had been done by an 1880s-trained hand.

Reframing the murders through Virchow reveals coherence where Bond saw chaos. And it points, with unnerving specificity, to the one named suspect who sat in Dreschfeld’s lectures: Francis Thompson.

Conclusion

The Whitechapel murders are often said to defy explanation. Yet the greatest obstacle may be the weight of Bond’s conclusion, repeated uncritically for over a century. When we contextualize Bond, recognize his blind spot, and apply the correct contemporary medical lens, the picture changes.

It was not crude butchery. It was the Virchow method — new, radical, misunderstood in Britain. Thompson learned it, Bond did not. And in that mismatch lies the key to why Bond could not recognize what had been done, and why Thompson remains the only suspect who could have done it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’d like to ask four questions.

1. It appears that Virchow published his book on his autopsy method in 1876. As Metropolitan Police Surgeon for Westminster division Dr. Bond performed numerous post mortems so how likely would it be that a man in his position wouldn’t have kept up with new techniques? And let’s face it, one that had been around for 12 years could hardly be considered new?
2. Why have none of the actual surgeons who have studied this case over the years like Nick Warren or Prosector mentioned the Virchow System as far as I’m aware? Wouldn’t they have been aware of it?
3. Why wouldn’t anyone with anatomical knowledge, who had read of this system, been just as likely a suspect as Thompson. He wasn’t the only person to have studied it after all.
4. You use a very strange phrase Richard: “He was directly exposed to Virchow’s method.” Directly exposed sounds like a phrase used by someone who doesn’t have any real proof that Thompson was actually taught this method. Are you suggesting that he learned it by a kind of Osmosis or do you have documented evidence of him learning this method specifically?

[Richard Patterson]

I’d like to ask four questions.

1. It appears that Virchow published his book on his autopsy method in 1876. As Metropolitan Police Surgeon for Westminster division Dr. Bond performed numerous post mortems so how likely would it be that a man in his position wouldn’t have kept up with new techniques? And let’s face it, one that had been around for 12 years could hardly be considered new?
2. Why have none of the actual surgeons who have studied this case over the years like Nick Warren or Prosector mentioned the Virchow System as far as I’m aware? Wouldn’t they have been aware of it?
3. Why wouldn’t anyone with anatomical knowledge, who had read of this system, been just as likely a suspect as Thompson. He wasn’t the only person to have studied it after all.
4. You use a very strange phrase Richard: “He was directly exposed to Virchow’s method.” Directly exposed sounds like a phrase used by someone who doesn’t have any real proof that Thompson was actually taught this method. Are you suggesting that he learned it by a kind of Osmosis or do you have documented evidence of him learning this method specifically?

Herlock,

These are good questions, but they underline why digging into primary sources matters rather than assuming.

First, yes, Virchow’s Handbuch der speciellen Pathologischen Anatomie appeared in 1876. But publication ≠ adoption. Dr. Bond’s training was complete decades earlier, and there’s no evidence in his notes that he ever updated his autopsy practice to Virchow’s multi-organ system. In fact, British medical education was notoriously conservative — Dreschfeld is widely credited as the first to bring Virchow’s method formally into English teaching at Owens College. Thompson was one of his pupils. That’s the “direct exposure”: he was literally in Dreschfeld’s class during the years the method was being demonstrated.

Second, you ask why Warren or Prosector never mentioned it. But their silence doesn’t mean the method wasn’t there. It means they hadn’t followed the Manchester trail. Once you consult Boardman’s biography or the Owens College registers, the picture is clear: Thompson was dissecting corpses under Dreschfeld during the very years the Virchow technique was first introduced to Britain.

Third, “anyone with anatomical knowledge” is not the same as six years in an institution where Virchow’s system was actually taught. Bond and most London surgeons had never studied it. Thompson had. That narrows the field drastically.

Finally, your quip about “osmosis” is misplaced. The documented evidence is in Thompson’s own training record and in contemporary accounts from his sister Mary, who complained about the number of corpses he cut into and the fees his father kept paying for cadavers. That is not poetic conjecture. It’s testimony of a student immersed in practical anatomy under the man who imported Virchow’s method.

So the difference here is between speculation and documented fact. The former asks, “Wouldn’t Bond have kept up?” The latter shows: Bond demonstrably did not, Thompson demonstrably did.

Richard

[GBinOz]

I’d like to ask four questions.

1. It appears that Virchow published his book on his autopsy method in 1876. As Metropolitan Police Surgeon for Westminster division Dr. Bond performed numerous post mortems so how likely would it be that a man in his position wouldn’t have kept up with new techniques? And let’s face it, one that had been around for 12 years could hardly be considered new?
2. Why have none of the actual surgeons who have studied this case over the years like Nick Warren or Prosector mentioned the Virchow System as far as I’m aware? Wouldn’t they have been aware of it?
3. Why wouldn’t anyone with anatomical knowledge, who had read of this system, been just as likely a suspect as Thompson. He wasn’t the only person to have studied it after all.
4. You use a very strange phrase Richard: “He was directly exposed to Virchow’s method.” Directly exposed sounds like a phrase used by someone who doesn’t have any real proof that Thompson was actually taught this method. Are you suggesting that he learned it by a kind of Osmosis or do you have documented evidence of him learning this method specifically?

Prosector:

Bond was a curious character. Although he was described as a surgeon he was in fact appointed as Surgeon to the Out Patients Department of the Westminster Hospital which meant that he hardly got to do any operative surgery himself. He committed suicide by jumping out of a window in 1901 ostensibly because he was having trouble sleeping but he was also suffering from a urinary stricture almost certainly the result of gonorrhoea.

Although he was adamant that Jack did not possess surgical skill or anatomical knowledge don't forget that the only victim that he saw was Mary Jane and I don't think anyone could have deduced anything from that killing. She certainly was butchered and very little evidence of skill or otherwise was left although the way he extracted her heart from below through the abdominal cavity did, in my opinion, show some evidence of anatomical expertise. It's not an easy approach to the heart (he couldn't get at it through the chest although he did try because he had no rib retractors).

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock,

These are good questions, but they underline why digging into primary sources matters rather than assuming.

First, yes, Virchow’s Handbuch der speciellen Pathologischen Anatomie appeared in 1876. But publication ≠ adoption. Dr. Bond’s training was complete decades earlier, and there’s no evidence in his notes that he ever updated his autopsy practice to Virchow’s multi-organ system. In fact, British medical education was notoriously conservative — Dreschfeld is widely credited as the first to bring Virchow’s method formally into English teaching at Owens College. Thompson was one of his pupils. That’s the “direct exposure”: he was literally in Dreschfeld’s class during the years the method was being demonstrated.

If you aren’t making the claim that Doctor’s don’t keep up with the latest developments in their own field’s then its difficult to see why you would attempt to imply that Dr Bond would have been the exception.

Second, you ask why Warren or Prosector never mentioned it. But their silence doesn’t mean the method wasn’t there. It means they hadn’t followed the Manchester trail. Once you consult Boardman’s biography or the Owens College registers, the picture is clear: Thompson was dissecting corpses under Dreschfeld during the very years the Virchow technique was first introduced to Britain.

They didn’t have to know of the likelihood Thompson being aware of it they would only have had to have been aware of the existence of the method itself or are you implying, as in the case of Bond, that neither Prosector or Nick Warren knew of it either. This Virchow method thing is a red herring.

Third, “anyone with anatomical knowledge” is not the same as six years in an institution where Virchow’s system was actually taught. Bond and most London surgeons had never studied it. Thompson had. That narrows the field drastically.

No it doesn’t. There can’t have been that many ways of removing a heart. The killer chose one. It doesn’t mean that he knew that he was working to a system.

Finally, your quip about “osmosis” is misplaced. The documented evidence is in Thompson’s own training record and in contemporary accounts from his sister Mary, who complained about the number of corpses he cut into and the fees his father kept paying for cadavers. That is not poetic conjecture. It’s testimony of a student immersed in practical anatomy under the man who imported Virchow’s method.

So the difference here is between speculation and documented fact. The former asks, “Wouldn’t Bond have kept up?” The latter shows: Bond demonstrably did not, Thompson demonstrably did.

Richard

Nothing about this favours Thompson. He very clearly, very obviously wasn’t the ripper. A very weak suspect.

[GBinOz]

Are you suggesting that he learned it by a kind of Osmosis or do you have documented evidence of him learning this method specifically?

Now then Herlock. Settle down. The view from a high horse can be considered extensive, but the perch is precarious. How much actual documented evidence do you have on your opinions regarding your preferred suspect - you know who I mean.

[Richard Patterson]

Nothing about this favours Thompson. He very clearly, very obviously wasn’t the ripper. A very weak suspect.

Herlock,

Let’s begin with epistemic asymmetries and curricular diffusion rates. The uptake of Virchow’s Handbuch wasn’t synchronous across medical cultures; the lag in pedagogical transfer meant London surgeons retained the monolithic organ-by-organ autopsy paradigm well into the 1880s, while Julius Dreschfeld at Owens explicitly operationalized Virchow’s multi-system method. That distinction is not “a red herring”: it’s a well-documented curricular divergence.

Now, translated into less jargon: Bond’s education froze decades earlier. He practiced in the groove of older British methods. Dreschfeld broke the mold in Manchester, and Thompson was sitting in his lecture hall when that break occurred. That is the rare and documented point of difference.

Simpler still: Bond kept doing things the old way. Thompson was taught the new way. That matters when you’re looking at murders where the organs weren’t removed randomly, but by a procedure that baffled Bond because it didn’t fit the style he knew.

And now, if I were explaining it to a curious kid poking at their own nose: imagine two kids building Lego houses. One kid only knows the square bricks because that’s all he’s ever used. The other kid gets taught by a new teacher who says, “Hey, you can take pieces from all the boxes at once.” When you later see a strange Lego house with pieces from everywhere, you don’t say, “Oh, the square-brick kid probably figured it out.” You say, “That looks exactly like what the new-method kid was trained to do.”

So when you brush it away as “a weak suspect,” you skip the only fact that narrows the field: Thompson really was in the one classroom in England where the Ripper’s strange cuts actually make sense.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Now then Herlock. Settle down. The view from a high horse can be considered extensive, but the perch is precarious. How much actual documented evidence do you have on your opinions regarding your preferred suspect - you know who I mean.

There’s a big difference George. I’ve never stated that my ‘preferred suspect’ was certainly or even almost certainly the ripper. I’ve even said numerous times that if you look at what we know for certainty about individual suspects then someone like Bury is a likelier suspect than mine. I’ve also said that the likeliest so,Union is probably that the killer has yet to be named. There is a big difference between having a suspect that interests me more than the other suspects and who I think is too easily dismissed (no more than that) than someone who states that there suspect is mathematically certain to have been the killer. My approach is cautious. Richard’s isn’t. And he’s willing to play fast and loose with the evidence to try a make this point. I don’t think that this is a good approach to the subject. And I have to say as well George, that it doesn’t show Richard in a flattering light when he posted those comments online where he was, in effect, trying to guilt trip into accepr]ting Thompson as the killer.

[Richard Patterson]

There’s a big difference George. I’ve never stated that my ‘preferred suspect’ was certainly or even almost certainly the ripper. I’ve even said numerous times that if you look at what we know for certainty about individual suspects then someone like Bury is a likelier suspect than mine. I’ve also said that the likeliest so,Union is probably that the killer has yet to be named. There is a big difference between having a suspect that interests me more than the other suspects and who I think is too easily dismissed (no more than that) than someone who states that there suspect is mathematically certain to have been the killer. My approach is cautious. Richard’s isn’t. And he’s willing to play fast and loose with the evidence to try a make this point. I don’t think that this is a good approach to the subject. And I have to say as well George, that it doesn’t show Richard in a flattering light when he posted those comments online where he was, in effect, trying to guilt trip into accepr]ting Thompson as the killer.

Herlock,

You say your approach is “cautious,” and I don’t doubt that you believe it is. But what you’ve just described is not caution, it’s avoidance. To declare “the likeliest solution is probably that the killer has yet to be named” is to take the safest position in the world — one that risks nothing, predicts nothing, and cannot be tested. It is the very opposite of what investigators, historians, or scientists do when faced with evidence.

You accuse me of being “fast and loose with the evidence,” but let’s be plain: I’m not speculating about Thompson because of a whim or a mood. I am pointing to documented and measurable facts:

• A senior City of London officer described a suspect with five very rare traits.
• Thompson uniquely matches them all.
• The combined probability that this convergence happened by accident, in that place and time, is astronomically small.

That is not playing games — that is applying the same logic that allows us to solve cases today that once seemed unsolvable.

If you believe the math is wrong, then challenge it with math. If you believe the documentary sources are misrepresented, then show your alternative readings. But to call my argument a “guilt trip” or “fast and loose” without demonstrating exactly where it fails is not caution. It is dismissal.

And I’ll make one final point: the very fact that I am prepared to say “yes, this man almost certainly was the killer” is not recklessness. It is accountability. It means my argument can be weighed, tested, and judged. Whereas saying “probably no one we’ve ever heard of” will forever remain immune to falsification.

That, Herlock, is the real difference.

[Fernglas]

Hi!
If I might wade into this discussion: I am not sold on Thompson, even if he is one of the strongest suspects based on his medical skills, but Richard is correct in that we can take many front row suspects, like e.g. Bury, Kelly, Deeming, Hyams, Maybrick, off the list since they had no skills on the level of the Ripper. The Ripper had substantial medical and surgical experience, Mitre Square would never have been happened like it did without it.
Myself I have Klosowski as prime suspect, for several reasons. Among them the fact that Klosowski studied medicine on the continent and not too far away from Virchow´s group in Berlin and he had knowledge of Antimon as a poison which was truly rare in Britain back then.

[GBinOz]

There’s a big difference George. I’ve never stated that my ‘preferred suspect’ was certainly or even almost certainly the ripper. I’ve even said numerous times that if you look at what we know for certainty about individual suspects then someone like Bury is a likelier suspect than mine. I’ve also said that the likeliest so,Union is probably that the killer has yet to be named. There is a big difference between having a suspect that interests me more than the other suspects and who I think is too easily dismissed (no more than that) than someone who states that there suspect is mathematically certain to have been the killer. My approach is cautious. Richard’s isn’t. And he’s willing to play fast and loose with the evidence to try a make this point. I don’t think that this is a good approach to the subject. And I have to say as well George, that it doesn’t show Richard in a flattering light when he posted those comments online where he was, in effect, trying to guilt trip into accepr]ting Thompson as the killer.

Hi Herlock,

We have been sparring partners for quite some time, and might even be described as the best of enemies. While we are often in conflict with our opinions, I hope that I am not mistaken that we have developed a mutual respect. I have to say, my friend, that when you make a statement like "There can’t have been that many ways of removing a heart. The killer chose one. It doesn’t mean that he knew that he was working to a system." I feel embarrassed for you. I mean no disrespect, but I think you are pursuing a bridge too far with such statements. It's a little like proposing that anyone given some brushes and paint could produce Van Gough's "Starry Night". I hope you will take this post in the spirit intended.

Cheers, George

[GBinOz]

Hi!
If I might wade into this discussion: I am not sold on Thompson, even if he is one of the strongest suspects based on his medical skills, but Richard is correct in that we can take many front row suspects, like e.g. Bury, Kelly, Deeming, Hyams, Maybrick, off the list since they had no skills on the level of the Ripper. The Ripper had substantial medical and surgical experience, Mitre Square would never have been happened like it did without it.
Myself I have Klosowski as prime suspect, for several reasons. Among them the fact that Klosowski studied medicine on the continent and not too far away from Virchow´s group in Berlin and he had knowledge of Antimon as a poison which was truly rare in Britain back then.

Hi Fernglas,

Of the suspects that you name I would exclude all but Thompson, Deeming and Klosowski. Current research has shown that Deeming was living in Birkenhead and was using the rail system to access London, but he is not known to have the skill set required to have achieved the dissections on Eddowes and Kelly. If Klosowski could be shown to have training in Virchow's techniques he would rise in position on my list of persons of interest.

Cheers, George

[Doctored Whatsit]

Herlock,


You accuse me of being “fast and loose with the evidence,” but let’s be plain: I’m not speculating about Thompson because of a whim or a mood. I am pointing to documented and measurable facts:

• A senior City of London officer described a suspect with five very rare traits.
• Thompson uniquely matches them all.
• The combined probability that this convergence happened by accident, in that place and time, is astronomically small.

That is not playing games — that is applying the same logic that allows us to solve cases today that once seemed unsolvable.

If you believe the math is wrong, then challenge it with math. If you believe the documentary sources are misrepresented, then show your alternative readings. But to call my argument a “guilt trip” or “fast and loose” without demonstrating exactly where it fails is not caution. It is dismissal.

I keep making the very simple point that Major Smith was describing the traits of his suspect. What matters is not proving that Thompson could have been his suspect, but that Thompson was JtR. Therefore what is needed is the strong factual evidence that not Thompson but JtR actually had these five traits which you repeatedly stress. So, where is the overwhelming evidence that proves beyond doubt that JtR must have been an ex-medical student, must have had an asylum history, must have had a prostitute connection, must have been involved in coin trickery, and must have lived in Haymarket?

Then once you have proven this to be so, then you can attempt to prove your case scientifically as you claim. But picking five traits without proving that these were definitely possessed by JtR, and then applying mathematics is of no relevance whatever. Your science is being applied to try to prove that Thompson was Smith's suspect, and not that he was JtR. There seems to me to be no scientific evidence whatever being demonstrated that Thompson was JtR.

[Fernglas]

Hi Fernglas,

Of the suspects that you name I would exclude all but Thompson, Deeming and Klosowski. Current research has shown that Deeming was living in Birkenhead and was using the rail system to access London, but he is not known to have the skill set required to have achieved the dissections on Eddowes and Kelly. If Klosowski could be shown to have training in Virchow's techniques he would rise in position on my list of persons of interest.

Cheers, George

Hi George!

I cannot say if Klosowski studied Virchow´s methods, but it is very likely. He studied in the 1880s in the oldest and most renowned Hospital in Warschau. The Kaiserreich was the leader in medicine at the time and it´s techniques were spreading. Warschau was in the direct neighbourhood.

[Patrick Differ]

For more than a century, the authority of Dr. Thomas Bond has hung over the Jack the Ripper case like a gavel striking down final judgment. Bond, the Home Office surgeon who examined Mary Jane Kelly’s remains in November 1888, left behind a report whose conclusion became orthodoxy: the killer, he insisted, required no anatomical or surgical training; in fact, the mutilations “do not even suggest anatomical knowledge.” His words became a cornerstone for dismissing medically trained suspects. If a qualified surgeon declared that no surgeon was necessary, the debate seemed closed.

But the problem is not what Bond saw. It is what Bond did not see. He was trained in the 1860s, at a time when organ removal was not part of standard autopsy procedure in Britain. He judged the Whitechapel mutilations against a frame of reference already outdated by 1888. What looked like meaningless “hacking” to him was in fact the new language of a different anatomical school — one he had never studied.

That school belonged to Rudolf Virchow, the German pathologist who revolutionized autopsy by insisting on systematic organ removal. Virchow’s method, disseminated through his students and lectures, reached England through Julius Dreschfeld at Owens College, Manchester. And sitting in Dreschfeld’s classroom, scalpel in hand for six full years, was Francis Thompson.

Bond’s Blind Spot

Bond’s autopsy notes on Kelly include lines often quoted: “The injuries were inflicted by a person without any scientific knowledge of the subject” and “there are no signs of anatomical knowledge.” These phrases have been recycled in Ripper literature as if they were definitive. But they reflect the limits of Bond’s education, not the limits of the killer.

Bond had learned the classic British post-mortem style — inspection of cavities, description of gross lesions, but not the routine removal of organs. To him, a kidney taken out through an abdominal incision in dim light looked clumsy, unnecessary, even amateurish. He expected, if a medical man were at work, a display of neatness, a surgeon’s demonstration piece. Instead he saw rough butchery.

What he could not recognize was that a different method existed, one not concerned with aesthetics, but with systematically separating and examining internal organs. This was Virchow’s method. And unless one had been trained in it, the Whitechapel mutilations would appear alien, even incomprehensible.

Virchow and the New Autopsy

Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) is remembered as the father of modern pathology. Among his many innovations was the insistence that a proper autopsy required the removal and individual study of every organ. No longer would the pathologist merely peer into the body; he would take out the liver, kidneys, uterus, stomach, weigh them, cut them in sections, compare them. Virchow’s technique emphasized a single knife — no elaborate surgical kit, just one dissection blade wielded with methodical precision.

This approach was considered radical in Britain in the 1870s. Many practitioners thought it excessive or even destructive. But to Virchow’s students, it became second nature. Among those students was Julius Dreschfeld (1845–1907), a German-Jewish physician who became Professor of Pathology at Owens College, Manchester. Dreschfeld brought Virchow’s teaching to England, publishing notes on the new method and training a generation of British students in organ removal.

Francis Thompson in the Dissecting Room

Francis Thompson entered Owens College in 1877 and studied medicine for six years. He was a poor student, inattentive in exams, but diligent in the dissecting room. Records show he passed his anatomy classes, attended pathology lectures, and practiced repeated dissections. He later wrote of his indifference to clinical practice but fascination with the knife.

Most importantly, Thompson’s years at Owens coincided with Dreschfeld’s tenure. He was directly exposed to Virchow’s method. Where Bond saw chaos, Thompson had been taught to see system. To remove a kidney, a uterus, or sections of the bowel with a single blade was not a mad improvisation — it was training.

And we know Thompson retained his scalpel. In a letter dated January 1889, he admits he had been shaving with his dissecting knife until it grew too blunt. That places the very tool in his pocket during the Ripper autumn.

The Murders through a Virchow Lens

Consider Catherine Eddowes, found in Mitre Square in September 1888. Her kidney and uterus were missing. To Bond, this was “the work of a man without knowledge.” To a Virchow student, it was elementary: kidneys and uterus were organs to be removed and weighed in the new autopsy protocol.

Annie Chapman’s case is similar. Her uterus was taken, and her intestines displaced over her shoulder. Bond read this as grotesque excess. A Virchow student would recognize the sequence: open abdomen, remove organ, set aside viscera.

Mary Kelly’s case was the most extreme. Bond interpreted the scattered organs as proof of frenzy. But Virchow’s method did not prize tidiness. It was about sequential removal, sometimes leaving organs piled together. The uterus and kidneys again were central. Bond could not square what he saw with his training. But that mismatch speaks more to him than to the killer.

Bond versus Thompson

Thus the irony: Bond’s verdict, long used to exclude medical suspects, actually strengthens the case for one man. Bond didn’t recognize Virchow because he never studied it. Thompson did.

• Bond: trained in pre-Virchow Britain, expecting neat incisions and demonstrations.
• Thompson: trained under Dreschfeld at Owens, drilled in Virchow’s organ-removal system.
• Bond: saw chaos, concluded “no anatomical knowledge.”
• Thompson: could have produced exactly what Bond saw, because it was anatomical knowledge — just not Bond’s.

The Broader Profile

Of course, method alone does not make a murderer. But Thompson’s biography slots into the larger frame with disturbing precision:

• Medical training: Six years, with dissection and pathology.
• Tool: A personal scalpel he admitted carrying.
• Geography: Living as a vagrant in Whitechapel during the murders, documented at Providence Row refuge.
• Psychology: Laudanum addiction, obsession with a prostitute who fled him, violent and misogynistic writings.
• Timeline: Murders stop when Thompson is hospitalized in late 1888.
• Police profile: Major Henry Smith’s 1910 description — ex-medical student, asylum, prostitute connections, coin fraud, Rupert Street — matches Thompson uniquely.

When you add to these factors that Thompson alone had the specific Virchow training needed to make sense of the mutilations, the case becomes stronger, not weaker.

Implications for Ripperology

For too long, Bond’s authority has been treated as a trump card. If Bond said “no medical knowledge,” then no medical suspect need apply. But authority is not infallibility. Bond’s dismissal reflects the parallax of education — he saw through 1860s eyes what had been done by an 1880s-trained hand.

Reframing the murders through Virchow reveals coherence where Bond saw chaos. And it points, with unnerving specificity, to the one named suspect who sat in Dreschfeld’s lectures: Francis Thompson.

Conclusion

The Whitechapel murders are often said to defy explanation. Yet the greatest obstacle may be the weight of Bond’s conclusion, repeated uncritically for over a century. When we contextualize Bond, recognize his blind spot, and apply the correct contemporary medical lens, the picture changes.

It was not crude butchery. It was the Virchow method — new, radical, misunderstood in Britain. Thompson learned it, Bond did not. And in that mismatch lies the key to why Bond could not recognize what had been done, and why Thompson remains the only suspect who could have done it.

I would argue that Thompson is an intriguing suspect but I thought the Virchow Method used a Y incision to perform the Autopsy or medical training? It would be hard to imagine Dr Bond being unaware of that. Also in 1885 all practicing Doctors were required to get a pharmaceutical license so there was regulated pressure on the Medical community to stay current.

None of the murders exhibited the Y incision of the body or appeared to be Virchow, however the Eddowes post mortem photo shows the Virchow method after autopsy. The sketch of her wounds however do not illustrate this method. The Eddowes sketch illustrates more of a jagged upward motion than a precise Y by a scalpel. Im not sure how you reconcile that?

Why would Thompson, a trained Medical man, strangle and then cut the throats of these women? This is a butcher method and not indicative of any medical training. That part of the murders I would argue is a strong case against medical people.
( I would draw attention to the fact that Detective Robert Sagar was also a trained Medical man before he became a Detective. Henry Smith said that Sagar was the most intelligent Detective in the force. But he ended up following a Butcher on Butchers Row after Mary Kellys slaighter)

In term of Geography a better suspect in my mind is the Butcher Jacob Levy. He not only lived at #36 Middlesex Street in the heart of the murders, he also lived on Fieldgate Street which was halfway between Bucks Row and Berner Street.
I would argue that it would be more likely that this killer had a residence in London City near Mitre Square and the hunting grounds near Flower and Dean and Thrawl Streets. All murders except Eddowes were in Metro. A local who was born there would know that these Police forces did not communicate and this would indicate a shrewdness on the part of the killer. Kill in Metro and return to City. Even after Eddowes the killer returned to Metro.

Asylums likely play a role in these murders as would drug use, alchohol use and syphilis. When the Police went to Asylums to see who was released the question i would pose is how far back did the Police go in records and were they just looking at Metro. Again this points to Levy as a better suspect as he was in Essex Asylum from April 1886 to the end of February 1887. He would have been treated with drugs especially at night when the Asylums wanted to keep the Wards quiet. Imagine being in a Victorian nut house for 11 months and not being severly affected by it? Post traumatic stress, suffering neurosyphilis would be a good description for Levy.

Thompson is indeed interesting but the profiles being suggested are not unique. As ive said before the Kosher butcher community was required by Kosher law to examine organs. Unlike perhaps a hunter or gentile butcher who just gutted the animal.

An excellent debate !!!