Was the ripper religious?

[Aethelwulf]

Seems an odd question, given his activities, but was re-reading the linguistic analysis paper that highlights a link between Saucy Jack and Dear Boss (quite a strong link) and another link (less strong) between those two letters and 'Maob and Midian', sent to Central News (thread on this letter here: https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...-midian-letter)

Also spotted this (below) on JTR Forums. Not clear what the content was but seems to have been written in three different handwriting styles that tallied with previous letters. Also interesting that this man seems to been a have had knowledge of every lodging house in the area.

[Herlock Sholmes]

When I saw this thread my first thought was surely Wulf isn’t going to ask “Was Bury A Black Magician?”

I have to say though, if I had to pick any letter that might possibly ‘sound believable’ it would be the Moab And Midian one. That’s based on nothing tangible though.

Also…

April 1886 - Conservative politician JG Talbot held a meeting in Kings Bench Walk to get Barristers to join the mission at Oxford House (which had opened in 1844) in Bethnal Green. It was a place where the better off (inc Oxford men) could live among the poor and help them. It was a more religious movement than Toynbee Hall. (The North Country Vicar claimed that the ripper was part of a movement rescuing poor women in the East End.)

You might guess who I’m referring to here Wulf But, and I’m working from memory here (I can check later though) I believe that the husband of one of Druitt’s sisters, who was a Vicar, ran a mission on the Old Kent Road I believe.

[Aethelwulf]

When I saw this thread my first thought was surely Wulf isn’t going to ask “Was Bury A Black Magician?”

I have to say though, if I had to pick any letter that might possibly ‘sound believable’ it would be the Moab And Midian one. That’s based on nothing tangible though.

Also…

April 1886 - Conservative politician JG Talbot held a meeting in Kings Bench Walk to get Barristers to join the mission at Oxford House (which had opened in 1844) in Bethnal Green. It was a place where the better off (inc Oxford men) could live among the poor and help them. It was a more religious movement than Toynbee Hall. (The North Country Vicar claimed that the ripper was part of a movement rescuing poor women in the East End.)

You might guess who I’m referring to here Wulf But, and I’m working from memory here (I can check later though) I believe that the husband of one of Druitt’s sisters, who was a Vicar, ran a mission on the Old Kent Road I believe.

It is certainly an odd follow up to Dear Boss and SJ. Also suggests some niche bible knowledge (I had the great misfortune to go to catholic schools and have never heard of M & M (not that I would have listed anyway)).

I wonder if someone of Druitt's standing would have been fairly memorable at one of these missions?

As we're talking about suspects I will mention that Berry said that Bury spent a lot of his time in prison in the library reading the bible and other religious works. He also seems to have known the Rev Gough previously (I think) and certainly confided his confession about the murder of his wife to him.

I also found this general ref to M & M: Moabites and Midianites are two distinct peoples in most of the Bible. Yet they appear to be interchangeable in a story about sex and revenge that runs through three Torah portions in the book of Numbers/Bemidbar: the portions Balak (last week), Pinchas (this week), and Mattot.

Based on something else Berry said, Bury seems to have had an eye for revenge:

When in the cell about to pinion him, I said, 'Well, Jack the Ripper, have you anything to say, if so, say it now, as you will have no chance later', 'No', was the reply, 'If anyone stole anything from me, I'd kill the lot to find the right one. I'm not going to give you any big lines, go on with your work, Berry, I'll not say anything'.

Pure speculation of course. Shame most of these letters are missing.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It is certainly an odd follow up to Dear Boss and SJ. Also suggests some niche bible knowledge (I had the great misfortune to go to catholic schools and have never heard of M & M (not that I would have listed anyway)).

I wonder if someone of Druitt's standing would have been fairly memorable at one of these missions?

As we're talking about suspects I will mention that Berry said that Bury spent a lot of his time in prison in the library reading the bible and other religious works. He also seems to have known the Rev Gough previously (I think) and certainly confided his confession about the murder of his wife to him.

I also found this general ref to M & M: Moabites and Midianites are two distinct peoples in most of the Bible. Yet they appear to be interchangeable in a story about sex and revenge that runs through three Torah portions in the book of Numbers/Bemidbar: the portions Balak (last week), Pinchas (this week), and Mattot.

Based on something else Berry said, Bury seems to have had an eye for revenge:

When in the cell about to pinion him, I said, 'Well, Jack the Ripper, have you anything to say, if so, say it now, as you will have no chance later', 'No', was the reply, 'If anyone stole anything from me, I'd kill the lot to find the right one. I'm not going to give you any big lines, go on with your work, Berry, I'll not say anything'.

Pure speculation of course. Shame most of these letters are missing.

You have a Reverend Gough and I have a Hough (I’m sure that between us we could weave a Druitt/Bury conspiracy around this.

I just found this. Druitt’s sister married the Reverend William Hough (1859-1934) who became second Bishop of Woolwich. They ran the Corpus Christi Mission in the Old Kent Road.

There’s no actual evidence of course that Druitt ever actually did any of this type of charity work. All that can be said though is that it’s at least possible and that he would have been in a position to have done it (along with a few thousand others). No more than that.

[Richard Patterson]

Seems an odd question, given his activities, but was re-reading the linguistic analysis paper that highlights a link between Saucy Jack and Dear Boss (quite a strong link) and another link (less strong) between those two letters and 'Maob and Midian', sent to Central News (thread on this letter here: https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...-midian-letter)

Also spotted this (below) on JTR Forums. Not clear what the content was but seems to have been written in three different handwriting styles that tallied with previous letters. Also interesting that this man seems to been a have had knowledge of every lodging house in the area.

Why Thompson is the most likely author of the “Moab and Midian / Dear Boss”-style letter

Hello — short version first: the content, voice, biblical frame, timing and biographical circumstances all point to Francis Thompson far more strongly than to a random crank. Below I set out the linked facts, quoting from my book where the parallels are clearest.

1) The theological vocabulary and prophetic register

Compare the Central News excerpt of the letter with Thompson’s own prose in Catholics in Darkest England (published under his pen-name Tancred) — both use the same Old-Testament idiom and the rhetoric of divine mandate.

From the letter (Oct. 5):

“In the name of God hear me… If she was an honest woman I will hunt down and destroy her murderer. If she was a whore God will bless the hand that slew her, for the woman of Moab and Median shall die…”

From Catholics in Darkest England:

“I see upon my right hand a land of lanes… I ask myself whether there be indeed an Ormuzd and an Ahriman… Here, too, has the Assassin left us a weapon… Even so our army is in the midst of us, enrolled under the banner of the Stigmata.”

The cadence is not merely similar; it is the same grammatical habit: apocalyptic binaries (Ormuzd/Ahriman), sacrificial rhetoric, and metaphors that convert urban squalor into cosmic warfare. That is an authorial fingerprint.

2) Thematic overlap: prostitution, sacrifice, and divine justification

Both the letter and Thompson’s review obsess on prostitution as sin and on sacrificial violence as a form of divine cleansing. In my book I trace how Thompson’s Nightmare of the Witch Babies and other unpublished drafts literalise this: knights, hunting women, disembowelling, even tearing foetuses. The letter’s invocation of Moab (a Biblical place associated with child sacrifice and immorality) and its explicit “God will bless the hand that slew her” line are precisely the kind of sanctified cruelty Thompson rehearses in manuscript.

3) Timing and motive align ominously

You’ll know if you read on Thompson’s biographies or as is detailed in my book, Jack the Ripper, the Works of Francis Thompson, that his prostitute lover left him in June 1888; he finally stopped searching in October, the same month the Whitehall Torso was found. The torso’s removal of the uterus and the application of tourniquets to stem blood echo techniques reported in the Ripper corpus and also reflect a medically informed killer. The letter’s timing — three days after the torso was found — fits perfectly with a man who is publicly scripting his own moral justification while privately collapsing into obsession.

4) Knowledge of lodging houses and the East End

The forum thread that notes the letter-writer’s knowledge of lodging houses dovetails with Thompson’s biography: after July 1888 he refused offers of steady accommodation, preferring nights on the streets, minding cab horses, and sleeping at refuges in Limehouse and Spitalfields. That proximity and practical knowledge make him a plausible author of a letter that references local patterns and play-acts the voice of a man inside the city’s lodging-house economy.

5) Style, literacy and rhetorical skill

This letter is not the slurred run of a crank; it’s written by someone comfortable with high rhetoric, scriptural allusion, and public stagecraft. Thompson was a trained writer and critic, able to adopt polemical personas (Tancred) and to spin dramatic language intended for editors and readers. A wildman or hoaxer, by contrast, rarely sustains this register so consistently.

What would clinch the authorship (and what we already have)

• Handwriting comparison / paper provenance would be decisive; lacking that, a cluster of textual fingerprints — repeating metaphors, unusual biblical references, the Tancred persona, and the personal timeline — is the next best thing.
• My book reproduces these parallels and points to the Whitehall Torso coincidence, the laudanum withdrawal, and Thompson’s suppressed violent drafts. Taken together they form a cumulative case — not absolute proof, but authorial probability of the highest order short of forensic signature.

Bottom line

The “Moab and Midian / Dear Boss”-style letter reads like it came from someone who thinks in scripture, writes like a critic, knows the streets, and is ideologically prepared to sanctify violence. That description fits Francis Thompson — especially in late-summer and autumn 1888 — better than almost any other named suspect. The letter is not a random crank note; it is the public voice of a man who had already been rehearsing the theology of slaughter in private and whose life imploded on the very timeline and geography which the note references.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Another ‘same old’ list provided by Richard - tick

A single question answered - zero

We continue to have no reason to suspect this entirely harmless poet.

[Tani]

Whilst I believe he is the author of DB and SJ, I don't believe he wrote M&M.

As for his being religious it seems highly unlikely.

That's about all.

[FISHY1118]

Great research Richard .

By all means do continue with this highly rated JtR suspect.