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

[Herlock Sholmes]

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.

And yet there are surgeons that disagree with you.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This isn’t a debate. It’s Richard trying to twist the evidence to make Thompson fit.

[Patrick Differ]

This isn’t a debate. It’s Richard trying to twist the evidence to make Thompson fit.

No one knows who the Ripper was. There appears to be objectivity in the discussion and I dont personally see anything wrong with the argument content. Constructive counterpoint is debate. Everyone has favorite suspects but the only concrete evidence besides location are the bodies themselves. I didnt see where any of the murders were described as having a Y incision. The Virchow method would be considered as solid evidence of a medical man. That was not the case is my only point based on description and sketches.

[Herlock Sholmes]

No one knows who the Ripper was. There appears to be objectivity in the discussion and I dont personally see anything wrong with the argument content. Constructive counterpoint is debate. Everyone has favorite suspects but the only concrete evidence besides location are the bodies themselves. I didnt see where any of the murders were described as having a Y incision. The Virchow method would be considered as solid evidence of a medical man. That was not the case is my only point based on description and sketches.

The problem is when the evidence is tampered with to suit. An important example is that Richard states it as a fact that Thompson was staying at the Providence Row refuge at the time of the murders. Anyone not knowing the facts would look at that and think “hey that’s a really important point.” It’s just misinformation and i think that it should be called out. For the record we really don’t have a jot of evidence that Thompson ever stayed there. All that we have is from his writing when he said that he’d seen the men queueing outside the place. Nowhere, ever, is it stated that he went inside. He may have stayed there at some point though Patrick. No one could call it impossible or even unlikely. But ‘might have’ isn’t enough to justify Richard’s stating of it as a fact and he not only states it as a fact he even says that it was during the murders and the only reason he does this is because we know that Thompson is searching for his girlfriend in Autumn/September. We don’t know where he stayed though but we know that he did use dosshouse at times when he had the money and he often slept rough. ‘Might possibly have done’ should be stated as fact.