American Jack the Ripper - True Crime Conference, Baltimore, April 7-8, 2018

[ChrisGeorge]

Here is the latest RipperCon swag-erama giveaway --

Name a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Virginia for a time and a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Maryland for a while, and you could win some bits of VA and MD history. Good luck.

As before, previous winners of RipperCon loot cannot win again.



* I just realized that this military map from 1861 shows Virginia as originally constituted before West Virginia split off!

[ChrisGeorge]

Below we show is where Dr Tumblety was living in a lodging house at the corner of N. Liberty and Clay Streets in Baltimore circa 1900 to 1902, supposedly ill and in poverty. Nonetheless, that did not stop the aging quack from picking up male companions in local parks, including Druid Hill Park and Patterson Park, neither of which was particularly close to this location, so he probably got there by streetcar.

The location of the lodging house is also significant because it is on the corner of Clay Street, a noted "red light" district, which was also known for a major fire in 1873, and the close vicinity of the Hotel Rennert, immediately across N. Liberty Street, another place where Dr T probably picked up male company.

Tumblety's former lodging house will be visited by attendees of RipperCon 2018 on a free walking tour of downtown Baltimore sites scheduled to leave the Lord Baltimore Hotel at 18 W. Baltimore Street at 2:00 pm on Friday, April 6, led by RipperCon organizer Christopher T. George. We will also have an all-day RipperCon bus tour on Monday, April 9 of notable Baltimore locations such as Fort McHenry, the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office, and the graves of Edgar Allan Poe and John Wilkes Booth, the cost for which will be $50 per person. Full details to be announced shortly.





Hotel Rennert, W. Saratoga and N. Liberty Streets, from Cathedral Street

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby

Thanks. No the ship pictured is the Pride of Baltimore II, a replica War of 1812 schooner modeled on Captain Thomas Boyle's Chasseur which gained fame during the war and was hailed by a local newspaper as "The Pride of Baltimore" when it returned to the city in April 1815. The replica schooner operates as a goodwill ambassador for the City of Baltimore.

Cheers

Chris

Thanks Chris! Beautiful pictures Keep em comin

[Abby Normal]

Here is the latest RipperCon swag-erama giveaway --

Name a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Virginia for a time and a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Maryland for a while, and you could win some bits of VA and MD history. Good luck.

As before, previous winners of RipperCon loot cannot win again.



* I just realized that this military map from 1861 shows Virginia as originally constituted before West Virginia split off!

Edgar Allan Poe!!

[Abby Normal]

Here is the latest RipperCon swag-erama giveaway --

Name a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Virginia for a time and a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Maryland for a while, and you could win some bits of VA and MD history. Good luck.

As before, previous winners of RipperCon loot cannot win again.



* I just realized that this military map from 1861 shows Virginia as originally constituted before West Virginia split off!

Yes it’s the only thing we give those troglydites for around here. Lol

[ChrisGeorge]

RipperCon 2018 Tours


BUS TOUR: Monday, April 9, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. $50 per person.

RipperCon 2018 will feature a bus tour of Baltimore that will include Fort McHenry, birthplace of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the grave of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, Edgar Allan Poe’s grave and house, and the Maryland Medical Examiner’s office home to the famous “Nutshell Studies” crime scene dioramas created in the 1930’s by Frances Glessner Lee. Overall tour leader will be Christopher T. George, UK-born Ripperologist and War of 1812 historian, who though he claims Liverpool, England as his birthplace has in truth lived considerably longer in Baltimore than he ever lived in the city of his birth!

Our tour of Green Mount Cemetery will be led by Bill Emmerich. Among other graves, we will visit the obelisk tomb of the Booth family where the remains of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth lie and the burial places of Baltimore-born notables such as Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, who married Napoleon’s younger brother Jerome, Walter Lord, author of A Night to Remember on the Titanic disaster, and the resting place of the man who patented the Ouija Board.

Our tour at Fort McHenry will be led by veteran retired National Park Service Ranger Scott S. Sheads. Sheads is an expert on fort history including its roles both during the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

During the war between the states the fort was used by the Union Army as a prison for many of the top leaders in the city, including Mayor George W. Brown and police commander Marshal George P. Kane. These men and other Baltimoreans were viewed as southern sympathizers following a riot on Pratt Street (near today’s National Aquarium) when on April 19, 1861 a pro-Confederate mob attacked Union troops on their way to defend Washington, D.C. The riot led to Baltimore being clamped under martial law with artillery on Federal Hill famously trained on downtown Baltimore.

A detailed blow-by-blow account of the trouble Baltimore was in at the outset of the Civil War may be found in a pdf available from the Library of Congress here. As an aside, the Pinkerton Detective Agency kept a downtown office and the Pinkertons claimed to have foiled a “Baltimore Plot” to assassinate Lincoln when the president elect was on his way to his inauguration. A grim possibility postponed in spring 1861 made bloodily real just four years later at the hands of actor and Marylander John Wilkes Booth. Sic temper tyrannis!

Following the tour of Fort McHenry, we will retire for an hour to an Inner Harbor restaurant for an on-your-own lunch.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): The circumstances of his mysterious death in Baltimore in October 1849 have never been sufficiently explained.

After lunch, we plan to go to Westminster Cemetery to see the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, his house on Amity Street, and Frances Glessner Lee’s dollhouse-scale recreations of crime scenes, “Nutshell Studies,” in the Maryland Coroners’ Office where our tour guide is expected to be, as in 2016, Bruce Goldfarb from the medical examiner’s staff.

Tour will leave the Lord Baltimore Hotel at 12 West Baltimore Street at 9:00 am promptly on Monday, April 9 and return to the same location at 5:00 pm. The price is $50 per person, payable via PayPal to editorctrip@yahoo.com. Note that space is limited to 50 people so book early!

WALKING TOUR: Friday, April 9, 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm. FREE.

RipperCon organizer Christopher T. George has determined that due to recent changes in traffic patterns in downtown Baltimore it will not be possible to visit Jack the Ripper suspect Dr. Francis Tumblety’s former lodging house on North Liberty Street by means of the tour bus. Instead, given that the location is within five minutes walk of RipperCon 2018 convention headquarters at the Lord Baltimore Hotel at 12 West Baltimore Street, Chris will lead a free walking tour of downtown Baltimore locations on Friday, April 6, starting from the hotel at 2:00 pm.

Leading Jack the Ripper suspect Dr. Francis Tumblety is listed as living in a lodging house at 218-220 N. Liberty Street at the time of the 1900 U.S. Census. The building is on the corner of Clay Street, a notorious “red light” district of the day as well as the scene of a disastrous 1873 fire. Even more significant, perhaps, Tumblety was living within a mile of the residence of fellow Irish American James Cardinal Gibbons, to whom “Dr. T” left $1,000 under an alleged Baltimore will, and $10,000 under a St. Louis will ultimately held to be valid by the Supreme Court of Missouri in 1908, five years after the suspect’s passing in St. Louis on May 28, 1903 at the age of 73.

The “Home for Fallen Women” on North Exeter Street in Baltimore to whom the Dr. T left $1,000 under the disallowed Baltimore document received no bequest under the St. Louis will upheld by the high court. As might be expected, some authors on the Whitechapel murders, e.g., Stewart P. Evans and Paul Gainey in Jack the Ripper: First American Suspect aka The Lodger (1995), have found it significant that the suspect would leave money to a home for prostitutes, as if he was suffering from a fit of remorse for his bloody acts in the East End of London in the autumn of 1888.

Folk on the walking tour will also see a statue of James Cardinal Gibbons as well as the residence where the prelate lived on North Charles Street, next to the 1806 Basilica of the Assumption (the first Catholic cathedral in the United States), along with the house where Edgar Allan Poe received his first major literary recognition, and the Poe Room of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, among other sites of interest in downtown Baltimore. If you are interested in the free walking tour, sign up by emailing Chris George at editorctrip@yahoo.com.

Chris George speaking to tour group at major Jack the Ripper suspect Dr Francis Tumblety’s former lodging house, 218-220 N. Liberty Street, Baltimore

Visit the RipperCon Website for complete information on the event.

[ChrisGeorge]

Still looking for an answer to this trivia question unless Mr. Phillip Walton at JtR Forums can produce information to show that H. H. Holmes lived in the Dominion of Virginia! Good luck, Phillip, and everyone else!

Here is the latest RipperCon swag-erama giveaway --

Name a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Virginia for a time and a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Maryland for a while, and you could win some bits of VA and MD history. Good luck.

As before, previous winners of RipperCon loot cannot win again.



* I just realized that this military map from 1861 shows Virginia as originally constituted before West Virginia split off!

[ChrisGeorge]

RipperCon 2018 Speaker Announcement!




BERNARD BEAULÉ—“Tumblety: Historical and Criminal Evidence Issues”

Born a French Canadian in the town of Havre Saint-Pierre on Quebec's North Shore, Beaulé spent some ten years in his childhood in the United States where his father studied surgery.

Although he has a college degree in Social Science focusing on empirical research and he also attended law school, he never claimed to be other than someone looking for the truth. Beaulé and his wife are these days resident for much of the year in Mérida, Mexico, 190 miles west of Cancún. He is working toward a Master’s degree in Mayan archeology.

Known by colleagues as a trouble shooter, Bernard Beaulé’s career brought him constantly closer to what he aspired to become—a writer. From governmental papers, political speeches, and, years later, given his passion for gardening, a book on how to design and build water gardens (a French-Canadian best seller!), he now adventures himself in the historical fiction genre. His first novel, My Ripper Hunting Days, allowed him to blend in all the aspects that an author working with the past should consider to be his ground rules: rigor, integrity, endless self-challenging, and acceptance of peer review.


Don’t miss out on RipperCon in Baltimore, April 7-8 -- the only North American Jack the Ripper - True Crime Conference in the 130th Anniversary Year of the Whitechapel Murders! Go to www.RipperCon.com for information.

Only 50 spaces available and they are going fast. Book now for two days of talks April 7-8 and two days of tours of Baltimore -- a free walking tour Friday, April 6 and a bus tour ($50 per place) on Monday, April 9.

[ChrisGeorge]

Here is the latest RipperCon swag-erama giveaway --

Name a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Virginia for a time and a Jack the Ripper suspect who lived in Maryland for a while, and you could win some bits of VA and MD history. Good luck.

As before, previous winners of RipperCon loot cannot win again.



* I just realized that this military map from 1861 shows Virginia as originally constituted before West Virginia split off!

Phillip Walton at JtR Forums correctly named two Jack the Ripper suspects who lived in Maryland and Virginia: Tumblety and Maybrick, respectively. Phillip's loot will be dispatched to him later today.

Another trivia question. . . yet more RipperCon 2018 swag to be won! --

Name the capital of Maryland and the American (although Scottish-born) naval hero buried there.

You could win some antique postcards connected to the place. Good luck!

Previous RipperCon 2018 trivia winners cannot win again.

[Robert St Devil]

Annapolis, John Paul Jones

[Pcdunn]

He of the great quotation, "I have not yet begun to fight!" (Go, Navy!)

[ChrisGeorge]

Annapolis, John Paul Jones

Yes. Congratulations. I need to determine you were correct with the correct answer. Stay tuned.

[Robert St Devil]

He of the great quotation, "I have not yet begun to fight!" (Go, Navy!)

Hi Pat. Go Army!!

[Pcdunn]

Hi Pat. Go Army!!

Hi, Robert. My dad was Army Air Force, while my uncle was career Army, so I'm suppose I might as well throw in my lot on your side, lol. Just wanted to support J. P. Jones.

[Robert St Devil]

Hi, Robert. My dad was Army Air Force, while my uncle was career Army, so I'm suppose I might as well throw in my lot on your side, lol. Just wanted to support J. P. Jones.

My bad, Pat.
Knee-jerk reaction, some habits never die lol.

happiest thanksgiving