Rating The Suspects.

[Richard Patterson]

Violent written imagery cannot be equated to actual violence or else every writer of horror fiction would be a potential killer. Thoughtcrime doesn’t count.

Is there anywhere in Thompson’s writing where he specifically expresses a hatred of prostitutes?

On the criteria list (first page) I list Mental Health issues that are serious and are connected to violence. This wasn’t the case with Thompson.

Police interest is zero. We need evidence first that the police had interest in him and we have zilch.

You say a runaway lover in the East End. Surely she was a West End prostitute?

Why do you say that he was living close to the murder sites at the time of the murders (Providence Row) when there’s no evidence for this?

Thompson isn’t “zilch.” His own writings show explicit hatred of prostitutes: “These girls whose practice is a putrid ulceration of love, venting foul and purulent discharge… a blasphemy against love’s language.” That is psychosexual contempt, not neutral metaphor.

There’s nothing ambiguous in that Thompson passage. For clarity: he is not describing illness in the abstract, nor speaking symbolically about “sin” in some vague sense. He is explicitly describing prostitutes and likening their sexual activity to a festering venereal wound.

“Putrid ulceration of love” = a disease-ridden parody of love.

“Venting foul and purulent discharge” = the imagery of syphilis and gonorrhoea, tied directly to prostitution in the 19th century.

“A blasphemy against love’s language” = the idea that their very work was a desecration of true intimacy.

In modern terms: Thompson is saying that prostitutes corrupt love itself, spreading disease and blasphemy with every act. That’s not the language of mere moral disapproval — it is disgust so pathological that it reduces women to pus and infection in his imagination.

For context, this wasn’t just one stray outburst. Thompson wrote in the same violent register across multiple pieces, combining sexual loathing with imagery of knives, blood, and punishment. It is part of a consistent pattern of thought.

So yes, he was directly condemning prostitutes, and in terms far more visceral than almost any other Victorian writer. To pretend it’s ambiguous is to ignore the plain meaning of the words.

John Walsh (Strange Harp, Strange Symphony) records Thompson at Providence Row Refuge in Whitechapel — so he was there, among the “nightly crowd of haggard men.” Add his childhood and adult fire-starting, asylum stays, laudanum addiction, and Major Henry Smith’s 1910 profile (ex-medical student, asylum, coin fraud, prostitute links, Rupert Street) — which Thompson uniquely matches.

Factor in his scalpel, medical training, obsession with a runaway prostitute, and the murders stopping when he was hospitalised in Nov ’88, and it’s clear: the case against Thompson rests on documented facts, not speculation.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thompson isn’t “zilch.” His own writings show explicit hatred of prostitutes: “These girls whose practice is a putrid ulceration of love, venting foul and purulent discharge… a blasphemy against love’s language.” That is psychosexual contempt, not neutral metaphor.

There’s nothing ambiguous in that Thompson passage. For clarity: he is not describing illness in the abstract, nor speaking symbolically about “sin” in some vague sense. He is explicitly describing prostitutes and likening their sexual activity to a festering venereal wound.

“Putrid ulceration of love” = a disease-ridden parody of love.

“Venting foul and purulent discharge” = the imagery of syphilis and gonorrhoea, tied directly to prostitution in the 19th century.

“A blasphemy against love’s language” = the idea that their very work was a desecration of true intimacy.

In modern terms: Thompson is saying that prostitutes corrupt love itself, spreading disease and blasphemy with every act. That’s not the language of mere moral disapproval — it is disgust so pathological that it reduces women to pus and infection in his imagination.

For context, this wasn’t just one stray outburst. Thompson wrote in the same violent register across multiple pieces, combining sexual loathing with imagery of knives, blood, and punishment. It is part of a consistent pattern of thought.

So yes, he was directly condemning prostitutes, and in terms far more visceral than almost any other Victorian writer. To pretend it’s ambiguous is to ignore the plain meaning of the words.

Does he actually mention the word ‘prostitute.’

John Walsh (Strange Harp, Strange Symphony) records Thompson at Providence Row Refuge in Whitechapel — so he was there, among the “nightly crowd of haggard men.” Add his childhood and adult fire-starting, asylum stays, laudanum addiction, and Major Henry Smith’s 1910 profile (ex-medical student, asylum, coin fraud, prostitute links, Rupert Street) — which Thompson uniquely matches.

But we don’t know when. Visiting a place at some point isn’t evidence of him being there at the time of the murders.

Factor in his scalpel,

Irrelevant, the ripper didn’t kill with a scalped. It’s no more suspicious than any man who might have carried a penknife.

medical training,

Opinion is divided on the whether the killer had medical knowledge. Phillips said yes, Brown said no, Sequeira said no, Bond said no.

obsession with a runaway prostitute,

Who he described as his salvation; a woman that he harboured no hatred for.

and the murders stopping when he was hospitalised in Nov ’88,

Ok, but others might say that Mackenzie was a ripper victim.

and it’s clear: the case against Thompson rests on documented facts, not speculation.

The case is totally reliant on speculation and the convenient interpretation of things to ‘fit’ a killer.

[Richard Patterson]

The case is totally reliant on speculation and the convenient interpretation of things to ‘fit’ a killer.

But

Herlock, dismissing everything as “speculation” is easy — but it doesn’t make the documented facts go away.

• Thompson’s language about prostitutes is not ambiguous. He doesn’t need to spell the word “prostitute” for the reference to be obvious. “Girls whose practice is a putrid ulceration of love… venting foul and purulent discharge” is 19th-century code for venereal disease from sex work. That is pathological disgust directed at prostitutes, full stop.
• Providence Row isn’t some vague “visited once” reference. John Walsh (Strange Harp, Strange Symphony) records Thompson living among the “nightly crowd of haggard men” queueing there for a bed. That places him in Whitechapel during the critical years — exactly when the murders happened.
• The scalpel matters because Thompson himself admitted in January 1889 that he shaved with his dissecting knife until it was blunt. This isn’t a harmless penknife; it’s a surgical blade carried by a man with six years’ medical training.
• Medical knowledge: contemporary doctors disagreed — but all agreed that at least some skill was shown in organ removal. Thompson’s training at Owens College under the Virchow autopsy system gave him precisely the background that explains those removals better than “random butcher.”
• His obsession with the runaway prostitute is double-edged: he called her his “salvation” but also wrote repeatedly of betrayal, blood, and punishment. That contradiction is the very hallmark of psychosexual fixation.
• Murders stopping in November 1888 is not coincidence. Thompson entered hospital then. Whether one accepts Mackenzie or not, the canonical series ended exactly when his freedom ended.

The cumulative weight isn’t “convenient interpretation.” It’s multiple independent lines converging: violent writings, Whitechapel homelessness, scalpel in hand, medical training, psychosexual motive, exact timeline match, and a police description (Smith 1910) that he uniquely fits.

Speculation is one thing. A profile this tight is another.

[Herlock Sholmes]

But

Herlock, dismissing everything as “speculation” is easy — but it doesn’t make the documented facts go away.

• Thompson’s language about prostitutes is not ambiguous. He doesn’t need to spell the word “prostitute” for the reference to be obvious. “Girls whose practice is a putrid ulceration of love… venting foul and purulent discharge” is 19th-century code for venereal disease from sex work. That is pathological disgust directed at prostitutes, full stop.
  
  No. This is women of low morals. He makes no specific mention of ‘prostitutes’ and yet you leave everyone who hasn’t checked believing that he did.
• Providence Row isn’t some vague “visited once” reference. John Walsh (Strange Harp, Strange Symphony) records Thompson living among the “nightly crowd of haggard men” queueing there for a bed. That places him in Whitechapel during the critical years — exactly when the murders happened.
  
  Critical years? Could you possibly be more vague Richard? When are we talking? 1887, 1887, 1888? And if 1888, when in 1888? January? Basically you are saying that at some point in his life he saw Providence Row refuge. You don’t have an iota of evidence that he ever stayed there. A hundred thousand people would have seen men queueing outside that building. It’s not ever remotely evidence of anything.
• The scalpel matters because Thompson himself admitted in January 1889 that he shaved with his dissecting knife until it was blunt. This isn’t a harmless penknife; it’s a surgical blade carried by a man with six years’ medical training.
  
  The rippers victims weren’t killed with a blunt knife either. The act of admitting to owning a knife isn’t evidence of anything. It’s a mundane fact that would have applied to thousands and not just a frail, gentle, drug addicted poet who never committed an act of violence on anyone
• Medical knowledge: contemporary doctors disagreed — but all agreed that at least some skill was shown in organ removal.
  
  This simply isn’t true Richard.
  
  Thompson’s training at Owens College under the Virchow autopsy system gave him precisely the background that explains those removals better than “random butcher.”
  
  It explains nothing. The killer didn’t require surgical knowledge and not one single doctor made this claim.
• His obsession with the runaway prostitute is double-edged: he called her his “salvation” but also wrote repeatedly of betrayal, blood, and punishment. That contradiction is the very hallmark of psychosexual fixation.
  
  In your opinion. Did he specifically talk of blood and punishment about that specific prostitute?
• Murders stopping in November 1888 is not coincidence. Thompson entered hospital then. Whether one accepts Mackenzie or not, the canonical series ended exactly when his freedom ended.
  
  Fair enough…but there’s always a collective shrugging of the shoulders when this is mentioned in regard to Druitt so I can’t see why it becomes more relevant with Thompson?

The cumulative weight isn’t “convenient interpretation.” It’s multiple independent lines converging: violent writings, Whitechapel homelessness, scalpel in hand, medical training, psychosexual motive, exact timeline match, and a police description (Smith 1910) that he uniquely fits.

Speculation is one thing. A profile this tight is another.

It’s your opinion shaped to fit

A gentle but troubled, drug addicted vagrant poet who never harmed anyone in his life.

[GBinOz]

A gentle but troubled, drug addicted vagrant poet who never harmed anyone in his life.

An everyman who would never be suspected by anyone?

[Herlock Sholmes]

An everyman who would never be suspected by anyone?

But you could say that about almost anyone George.

[GBinOz]

But you could say that about almost anyone George.

Well yes. The ripper was probably someone that no-one noticed. A face in the crowd without any circumstances that would attract attention. As is said, hiding in plain sight.

[GBinOz]

Just by the way my friend. It appears to me that your rating of Bury in the rating of suspects is erroneous. As far as is known, Bury never killed anyone with a knife. Any injuries inflicted by Bury with a knife were post mortem.

[Richard Patterson]

A gentle but troubled, drug addicted vagrant poet who never harmed anyone in his life.

Herlock, when you reduce Thompson to “a gentle but troubled poet who never harmed anyone,” despite the mountain of evidence — his violent writings, his own testimony of life in Whitechapel, his scalpel, his medical training, his fire-setting, his asylum stays, and his obsession with a runaway prostitute — it shows you’re not actually engaging with the sources. You’re repeating a hagiography written by his editors, not the man himself.

I’ve laid out documented facts; you dismiss them with a slogan. That tells me you’re not interested in the truth, only in defending a preferred image.

At that point, there’s no point continuing. I’ll leave you to your view, but for me the record stands as it is.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock, when you reduce Thompson to “a gentle but troubled poet who never harmed anyone,” despite the mountain of evidence — his violent writings, his own testimony of life in Whitechapel, his scalpel, his medical training, his fire-setting, his asylum stays, and his obsession with a runaway prostitute — it shows you’re not actually engaging with the sources. You’re repeating a hagiography written by his editors, not the man himself.

I’ve laid out documented facts; you dismiss them with a slogan. That tells me you’re not interested in the truth, only in defending a preferred image.

At that point, there’s no point continuing. I’ll leave you to your view, but for me the record stands as it is.

When I say that ‘he never harmed anyone’ I could perhaps re-phrase it.

So I’ll say “we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Francis Thompson ever physically harmed anyone in his entire life” That is the exact and literal truth. If you have a problem with the exact and literal truth Richard I’d suggest that the issue is with you.

[Fiver]

Re-scoring on that basis:

Thompson > 2 (age) – 2 (location) – 2 (violence/weapon) – 2 (mental health) – 2 (police) – 2 (hatred of prostitutes) – 2 (medical training) = 14

That score suddenly makes him the single strongest suspect on the list. And unlike most of the others, he has both presence in Whitechapel at the critical time and a unique, demonstrable overlap with the City Police’s own suspect profile.

Your rescoring is based on ignoring Herlock's scoring. Among other things, you rate Thompson a 2 in an area where Herlock's system gives 1 as a maximum.

Using the actual scoring method, I'd rate Thompson as:

(A) Age/physical health > 1 = issues creating doubt.

(B) Location/access to murder sites > 2 = no issues

(C) Violence > 0 = no known violence.

(D) Mental health issues > 1 = other

(E) Police interest > 0 = none known or not serious.

(F) Hatred/dislike of women/prostitutes > 1 = link to prostitutes

(G) Medical/anatomical knowledge (inc. animals) > 1 = yes

(H) Alcohol/drug issue > 1 = yes

[Fiver]

[*]Medical knowledge: contemporary doctors disagreed — but all agreed that at least some skill was shown in organ removal.

Your statement is provably false.

Here are the actual opinions of the medical types.

Dr Llewellyn - “some rough anatomical knowledge”

Coroner Baxter - "considerable anatomical skill and knowledge”

Dr Phillips - "seemed to indicate great anatomical knowledge.”

Dr Sequeira - "not possessed of any great anatomical skill"

Dr Brown - “a great deal of knowledge”

Dr Saunders did not think the killer showed anatomical skill.

Dr Bond - "no scientific nor anatomical knowledge" IIRC, Thomas Bond read the reports in the victims, he did not examine the bodies.

So the assessments of skill are:
None - Bond, Saunders
Some - Lllewellyn, Sequeira
A lot - Baxter, Brown, Phillips

The majority of the doctors thought Thompson had too much medical knowledge to be the Ripper.

[Richard Patterson]

Your rescoring is based on ignoring Herlock's scoring. Among other things, you rate Thompson a 2 in an area where Herlock's system gives 1 as a maximum.

Using the actual scoring method, I'd rate Thompson as:

(A) Age/physical health > 1 = issues creating doubt.

(B) Location/access to murder sites > 2 = no issues

(C) Violence > 0 = no known violence.

(D) Mental health issues > 1 = other

(E) Police interest > 0 = none known or not serious.

(F) Hatred/dislike of women/prostitutes > 1 = link to prostitutes

(G) Medical/anatomical knowledge (inc. animals) > 1 = yes

(H) Alcohol/drug issue > 1 = yes

Fiver, thanks for laying that out — but your scoring rests on assumptions that simply don’t fit the record.

(A) Age/physical health. Thompson was 29 in 1888, the prime age range for serial offenders. Yes, he was a laudanum addict, but contemporaries remarked that despite frailty he could walk the streets for hours. The Ripper did not need to overpower healthy men — only inebriated women. A “1” here is too harsh.

(C) Violence. “No known violence” isn’t accurate. Thompson’s prose (not just poetry) described prostitutes as “putrid ulcerations” who deserved to be “struck down.” In Nightmare of the Witch-Babies he graphically mutilates female figures. This is violence expressed in words, confirmed by his own biographers, and should count.

(D) Mental health. More than “other.” He had asylum stays, suicide attempts, hallucinations — major red flags for instability.

(E) Police interest. You write “none known,” but Major Henry Smith (City Police Commissioner) described a suspect in his 1910 memoir: a medical student, asylum inmate, tied to prostitutes, coin fraud, and Rupert Street. That combination is uniquely Thompson. Smith’s suspect is police interest.

(F) Hatred of prostitutes. This isn’t just “link.” Thompson’s writings are saturated with disgust for prostitutes, couched in medical imagery. It’s far stronger than casual dislike.

(G) Medical knowledge. Six years of formal anatomy, pathology under Dreschfeld, and possession of his own scalpel. That’s beyond a “1.”

If we reapply the system using actual biographical data, Thompson rises above the usual “maybes.” The weight of documented traits justifies the 14 I assigned. Scoring him low only works by stripping out his violence (in text), his police link (Smith’s profile), and his hatred (prose, not metaphor).

In other words: if Herlock’s system is meant to capture risk factors, then Thompson fits them more than anyone. To pretend otherwise is to handicap the data.

[Herlock Sholmes]

C) Violence. “No known violence” isn’t accurate. Thompson’s prose (not just poetry) described prostitutes as “putrid ulcerations” who deserved to be “struck down.”

Why can’t you get this point Richard?

We are talking about VIOLENCE. Actual, real, physical violence. Not someone talking about it. Words aren’t violence.

“No known violence” is 100% accurate.

[Herlock Sholmes]

. F) Hatred of prostitutes. This isn’t just “link.” Thompson’s writings are saturated with disgust for prostitutes, couched in medical imagery. It’s far stronger than casual dislike.

Not once does he use the word prostitute