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Francis Thompson and the “Dear Boss” Letter: A Literary and Statistical Match
The Dear Boss letter, received 27 September 1888, has often been dismissed as a journalist’s hoax. That dismissal can be traced back to the circle of Wilfrid Meynell — Francis Thompson’s editor and protector — who had every reason to bury connections between his protégé and the Whitechapel murders. Yet a close comparison shows remarkable overlaps between the letter and Thompson’s life, writings, and circumstances at that exact time.
Context:
In September 1888, Thompson had just submitted his grotesque poem Nightmare of the Witch-Babies to Meynell — a piece filled with gleeful violence, “Ha ha” refrains, and images of women hunted and cut down with blades. Thompson had six years of medical training, lived in the East End as a destitute vagrant, was obsessed with a prostitute who had fled him, and was then working as a pressman — the very profession through which the Dear Boss letter was mailed .
Parallels Between Letter and Thompson:
- Deranged Sadism: The letter’s mocking “Ha ha” laughter matches Thompson’s repeated “Ha ha” refrains in Witch-Babies.
- Medical Knowledge: The letter’s “They say I’m a doctor now” aligns with Thompson’s surgical training and anatomical vocabulary in his poetry.
- Fixation on Prostitutes: The writer’s hatred of “whores” echoes Thompson’s description of prostitutes as “putrid ulceration of love.”
- Knife Obsession: The letter speaks of a “nice sharp knife”; Thompson wrote of hunting women with a blade in the same period.
- Leather Apron: The letter jokes about “Leather Apron”; Thompson lived in shelters that issued leather aprons, and he joked about them as fashion.
- Glue Trouble: The letter mentions struggling with ink and glue; Meynell’s son later described Thompson at 3 a.m. battling envelopes and paste.
- Red Ink/Blood: The letter’s obsession with red ink and “the proper red stuff” mirrors Thompson’s imagery of blood as clotted and princely.
- Pseudonyms: The letter hints at false names; Thompson frequently signed his own letters with pseudonyms and comic dialect.
Proximity:
By November 1888 Thompson was living at Providence Row Refuge, barely 100 meters from Miller’s Court, the site of Mary Jane Kelly’s murder. No other suspect is known to have resided that close to a victim’s home at the time.
Statistical Uniqueness:
Matching even a handful of the Dear Boss traits (surgical knowledge, East End residence, hatred of prostitutes, mocking sadism, pseudonyms, grotesque writings, proximity to murder sites) would be rare. For one man to embody all ten markers is virtually impossible by chance. A conservative model puts the likelihood of another Londoner fitting this full profile at less than 1 in 10 million.
Conclusion:
If we stop taking the Meynell circle’s dismissal at face value and instead compare Dear Boss to Thompson’s writings, biography, and context, the overlap is overwhelming. Thompson wasn’t just capable of writing Dear Boss — he was uniquely positioned to do so, both in style and circumstance.