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How the Riper might have sunk the Titanic. A text based on my book, “Francis Thompson and the Ripper Paradox.’ Here’s just one example on why, even if Francis Thompson is not the most likely suspect, he is certainly the most interesting suspect since coming to the public’s attention in 1988. My novel often uses historical facts and people to provide possible answers to some of the seemingly eternal questions on Jack the Ripper. People have often asked me this question. If Thompson really was the Ripper then why did he stop with the murder of Mary Kelly? In real life I give mundane answers backed up with example or evidence. Such as the fact that, as well as possibly being castrated, Thompson was placed on the top floor of a country, male only, monastery surrounded by high walls and watchdogs which attacked him when he was on the grounds.
In my novel however, I can use these facts to draw more interesting conclusions such as Jack the Ripper didn’t stop after murdering Kelly. He had only just got started. 1,517 died in the Titanic sinking. One of the dead was William Thomas Stead. In 1888, W.T. Stead was editor of the “Pall Mall Gazette.” He is popularly believed to be a Ripper informant. Stead wrote a series of scathing articles upon Sir Anderson the Assistant Commissioner of the CID. Stead questioned Anderson's absence from London during the Whitechapel murders. Of Sir Anderson, who was vacationing in Switzerland, Stead wrote,
‘The chief official who is responsible for the detection of the murderer is as invisible to Londoners as the murderer himself’
In 1886 Stead, wrote an article called ‘How the mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor.’ Stead's story was upon a collision at sea between two ships. In the story, the surviving passengers battle over the lifeboats. The 1892 edition of Stead's “Review of Reviews”, had a story called “From the Old World to the New”. It was upon a fictional vessel named the Majestic. On board is a clairvoyant who gains a vision of a disaster in which a nearby ship collides with an iceberg.
As well as attacking the police seeking the Ripper in the press, Stead supported Francis Thompson. On January 12 1891, Stead wrote to Thompson upon his article “Catholics in Darkest England”.
'Dear Sir-I beg to forward you herewith a copy of the "Review of Reviews", in which you will find your admiral article quoted and briefly commented upon. Permit me to say that I read your article with sincere admiration and heartfelt sympathy.'
Thompson's article urged that Catholics wage war on the prostitutes. Using the pseudonym of ‘Tancred’, Thompson wrote a notice in the January 1891, edition of "Merry England", called "Catholics in Darkest England". The name of Tancred was borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli's novel 'Tancred', also titled “The New Crusade”. Tancred, the book’s main character, decides to go on a crusade to the Holy Land in the east. Disraeli in turn had selected the name of Tancred from that of an actual crusading knight who lived from 1076 to 1112 AD. This knight helped capture Jerusalem from the Muslims and was for a short time Prince of Galilee. Thompson's article was written as a reply to a book called "In Darkest England", written by General Booth the head and founder of the Salvation Army, whose first overnight homeless shelter, Thompson had stayed in. Thompson’s view of East End life and its people are typified in his essay, as well as his strong liking for Egyptian gods,
'In certain all too frequent moods, when I behold in the sphinx Life not so much that inscrutable face of hers, nor yet her nurturing breasts, but rather her lion’s claws… I look upon my left hand, and I see another region—is it not rather another universe? A region whose hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is chilled to stone ; where flowers are sold and women, where the men wither and the stars; whose streets to me on the most glittering day are black. For I unveil their secret meanings. I read their human hieroglyphs. I diagnose from a hundred occult signs the disease which perturbs their populous pulses. Misery cries out to me from the kerb-stone, despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden with fetters impalpable, but not imponderable; I hear the shaking of invisible lashes, I see men dabbled with their own oozing life. They are brought up in sin from their cradles,... the boys are ruffians and profligates, the girls harlots in the mother's womb… Here, too, has the Assassin left us a weapon which but needs a little practice to adapt it to the necessity of the day?...,For better your children were cast from the bridges of London than they should become as one of those little ones. From the claws of the sphinx my eyes have risen to her countenance which no eyes read.’
On April 14 1912, The Titanic struck an iceberg and, including Stead, it sunk almost four kilometres downward to the seabed of the Atlantic. Stead died whilst absorbed in one particular book in the Second Class Smoking Cabin. Everard Meynell, the son of Thompson’s publisher and biographer on Thompson noted the Titanic disaster in relation to the effect of Thompson’s writings,
'There perished with Mr Stead in the Titanic disaster in 1912 a Catholic priest, who had shortly before sailing recommended 'The Hound of Heaven' (the strangely significant line 'Adown Titanic glooms of chasamed fears') to a friend, as antidote to decadent poetry.'
In my novel however, I can use these facts to draw more interesting conclusions such as Jack the Ripper didn’t stop after murdering Kelly. He had only just got started. 1,517 died in the Titanic sinking. One of the dead was William Thomas Stead. In 1888, W.T. Stead was editor of the “Pall Mall Gazette.” He is popularly believed to be a Ripper informant. Stead wrote a series of scathing articles upon Sir Anderson the Assistant Commissioner of the CID. Stead questioned Anderson's absence from London during the Whitechapel murders. Of Sir Anderson, who was vacationing in Switzerland, Stead wrote,
‘The chief official who is responsible for the detection of the murderer is as invisible to Londoners as the murderer himself’
In 1886 Stead, wrote an article called ‘How the mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor.’ Stead's story was upon a collision at sea between two ships. In the story, the surviving passengers battle over the lifeboats. The 1892 edition of Stead's “Review of Reviews”, had a story called “From the Old World to the New”. It was upon a fictional vessel named the Majestic. On board is a clairvoyant who gains a vision of a disaster in which a nearby ship collides with an iceberg.
As well as attacking the police seeking the Ripper in the press, Stead supported Francis Thompson. On January 12 1891, Stead wrote to Thompson upon his article “Catholics in Darkest England”.
'Dear Sir-I beg to forward you herewith a copy of the "Review of Reviews", in which you will find your admiral article quoted and briefly commented upon. Permit me to say that I read your article with sincere admiration and heartfelt sympathy.'
Thompson's article urged that Catholics wage war on the prostitutes. Using the pseudonym of ‘Tancred’, Thompson wrote a notice in the January 1891, edition of "Merry England", called "Catholics in Darkest England". The name of Tancred was borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli's novel 'Tancred', also titled “The New Crusade”. Tancred, the book’s main character, decides to go on a crusade to the Holy Land in the east. Disraeli in turn had selected the name of Tancred from that of an actual crusading knight who lived from 1076 to 1112 AD. This knight helped capture Jerusalem from the Muslims and was for a short time Prince of Galilee. Thompson's article was written as a reply to a book called "In Darkest England", written by General Booth the head and founder of the Salvation Army, whose first overnight homeless shelter, Thompson had stayed in. Thompson’s view of East End life and its people are typified in his essay, as well as his strong liking for Egyptian gods,
'In certain all too frequent moods, when I behold in the sphinx Life not so much that inscrutable face of hers, nor yet her nurturing breasts, but rather her lion’s claws… I look upon my left hand, and I see another region—is it not rather another universe? A region whose hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is chilled to stone ; where flowers are sold and women, where the men wither and the stars; whose streets to me on the most glittering day are black. For I unveil their secret meanings. I read their human hieroglyphs. I diagnose from a hundred occult signs the disease which perturbs their populous pulses. Misery cries out to me from the kerb-stone, despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden with fetters impalpable, but not imponderable; I hear the shaking of invisible lashes, I see men dabbled with their own oozing life. They are brought up in sin from their cradles,... the boys are ruffians and profligates, the girls harlots in the mother's womb… Here, too, has the Assassin left us a weapon which but needs a little practice to adapt it to the necessity of the day?...,For better your children were cast from the bridges of London than they should become as one of those little ones. From the claws of the sphinx my eyes have risen to her countenance which no eyes read.’
On April 14 1912, The Titanic struck an iceberg and, including Stead, it sunk almost four kilometres downward to the seabed of the Atlantic. Stead died whilst absorbed in one particular book in the Second Class Smoking Cabin. Everard Meynell, the son of Thompson’s publisher and biographer on Thompson noted the Titanic disaster in relation to the effect of Thompson’s writings,
'There perished with Mr Stead in the Titanic disaster in 1912 a Catholic priest, who had shortly before sailing recommended 'The Hound of Heaven' (the strangely significant line 'Adown Titanic glooms of chasamed fears') to a friend, as antidote to decadent poetry.'
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