Mr Good morning ( i think that's his name)

Press Articles & Reviews.

Ripperanna

"Mr Patterson identifies the Ripper as the gifted though drug-addicted poet, Francis Thompson (1859-1907), who was born in his twin town Preston, Lancashire, the son of a doctor. Thompson was addicted to opium between the years 1879-1889, a form of laudanum. A confirmed drug addict he died of "morphomania" on November 12 1907. aged 48 years and weighing 70 pounds (5 stone) He was buried four days later at Kensal Green Cemetery, his 250 poems unrecalled. Thompson's tale may have inspired the account given by R Thuston Hopkins in 1935 about a man "fitting George Hutchinson's description". Identified only as "moring," he was known to be a friend of MJK, and a drug addicted poet, the son of someone well to do."

This is from:
http://www.geocities.com/darkly_burning/article.html

Just for info:
Robert Thurston Hopkins, (1884-1958), was a prolific author, writing topographical works, ghost stories and much more, including biographical works on such great British figures as Oscar Wilde, H G Wells and Rudyard Kipling. His 1935 book 'Life and Death at The Old Bailey' is often quoted in discussions of the identity of the infamous London serial killer 'Jack The Ripper'. Much of his work was related to the English countryside, with books on Sussex, where the family lived, and Cornwall, as well as several on London. He also wrote some of the early classics of industrial archaeology, on windmills and watermills, as well as the 'Moated Houses of England', published by Country Life in 1935. One of his other works was the 'Every Boy's Open Air Book' of 1925.

The chapter in question is on Caebook at
http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.hopkins.html
which article starts:
R. Thurston Hopkins inlcluded a chapter on Jack the Ripper entitled "Shadowing the Shadow of a Murderer" in his 1935 book, Life and Death at the Old Bailey. He provides a general overview of the case, and some discussion of Leonard Matters' Dr. Stanley theory. Of particular interest are some snippets of information he provides on Elizabeth Jackson, a putative Ripper victim in his eyes, as well as a "Mr. Moring" who Hopkins claimed was a poet who was close friends with Mary Jane Kelly. "Mr. Moring" was by Hopkins own admission a pseudonym, but Martin Fido has suggested that it may have been the poet Ernest Dowson (see Ripperana #29).

Hopkins describes him thus:
One of Mary Kelly's friends was a poor devil-driven poet who often haunted the taverns around the East End. I will call him " Mr. Moring," but of course that was not his real name. Moring would often walk about all night and I had many long talks with him as together we paced the gloomy courts and alleys. Of externals Moring was utterly heedless. He wore a blue pea-jacket, baggy trousers (much like the modern Oxford bags) and pointed button boots. His collar was, I distinctly remember, tied together with a bow of wide black moire ribbon, and like his boots, seemed to be crumpled into folds of sympathetic irregularity. He was what the Victorians called a ne'er-do-well, and a decadent. He had black, lank hair and moustache, and the long, dark face of the typical bard. It was said that his father -a prosperous tradesman in the East End-had disowned him because he had become a drug addict. Occasionally he returned home and begged money from his parents, and on his return to old haunts lie would enjoy a short period of luxury and sartorial rehabilitation. Moring, who knew every opium den in the East End, although at that time they were not counted in with the sights of London, often gave himself up to long spells of opium smoking.

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